Symbiosis
by 4persephone
Summary: Co-Authored with NeonDaises. MovieFic. A What-If of the Metaphorical variety. Sometimes to go forward, you have to go back...
1. Chapters 1 and 2

He doesn't understand how this began; how he ended up in a world he scarcely recognizes. He can probably decipher every blueprint ever written, but he can't seem to crack the code that tells him how to bridge the distance between her head and her heart.

He can recall every freckle that runs along the dapple of her spine, but he can't identify the enemy that's causing this, much less repair the fractures that are slowly ripping both of them apart. It's been five weeks since the day that some invisible switch got flipped, and every day she's one shard more broken and two steps closer to the door.

He is losing her in slow, hemorhaging increments and he still doesn't even exactly know why. Today is a bad day. Today is the opposite of yesterday.

Yesterday she arrived and went to right to work bullying him about his schedule with clear, sharp eyes and a vivid sense of humor. They bantered about what meetings she was going to make him attend and what board members he would probably piss off and force her to pacify before the day was over.

Their relationship lately had been a bizarre sort of barter…what he'd give for what she'd return. Her salary is the same as it had ever been, but her job is costing him – and her - more than either of them can really afford.

There's something he is missing…something she needs and isn;t getting. And he knows, somewhere in his gut, that his ignorance is going to cost them both more than either of them have the capital to cover. He wishes it were yesterday: when Pepper was in a fine form and he had actually been able draw in a deep breath.

Yesterday she had made herself a bowl of fresh chicken salad for lunch and she had drunk two cups full of freshly made ice tea. She had even allowed him to liberate at least half of what she'd prepared from her clutches with no more than a few racy quips and an offer to order Italian in for dinner in exchange.

Today is different than that - her appetite is gone and her eyes are restless. She's doing her best to lose herself in her work. It's as if she's painfully, frantically overly aware of everything, and apparently she's hurt by the hypersensativity.

He doesn't understand why some mornings she comes ito work like this: looking like like she's been secretly scrubbed raw over the whole of her skin. When that hapens she moves as if her whole body hurts, like she's twenty years older and she's walked a thousand more miles in uncomfortable shoes.

On days like this she tries to prentend that she's okay: that she's not ready to fold under a thousand pounds of pressure that she can't or won't name.

He knows better though, he can feel the pressure building. And he fears the impending explosion.

One of these days the dam is going to burst, and he's afraid they'll be litle left of her to recover once the floods wash the pretense away. Through the camera he watches her fold in on herself on the couch. Her pain is visceral with an unspoken chasm looming that's looming wider every second behind her eyes.

He would do anything - anything to stop it, but he doesn't know what will fix the problem or if she'll even let him try to ease the pain.

She won't talk about whatever's happening: she's good at putting on a suit of armor. The funny thing is that he'd kind of thought that was his job…it looks like no one has informed her.

She's lost at least 10 pounds in the last two weeks, and she doesn't have the spare flesh to begin with.

Pepper Potts doesn't eat when she's being consumed by something – it took him a while to identify that particular habit, but now he's sure of that much by now. Today she nibbles at the edge of a bagel before tossing the rest of it into the trashcan, ignoring the other things that he's ordered from a local bakery.

Today she stares vacantly into her cup of coffee, than activates her computer's touch screen. There are bags under her eyes that no makeup will completely hide, and heaviness to her shoulders that he'd build entire crane systems just to lift.

She's becoming a specter - a ghost of what she used to be.

He's thought back a thousand times trying to pinpoint where it started. As best as he can guess it was a few days after the most recent conference, when they were down in the lab. It had started with a touch, albeit one he'd iniated accidentally – a simple brush of his fingers against hers.

He'd called her down to the basement to help him with a particularly tricky bit of wiring. He's been doing that more lately: requesting help they both probably knew she didn't really need to give…just to scratch a strange kind of mental itch.

He wants her close now; it's like she's become a strange sort of addiction that he can't be without or he can't get his mind to focus.

Some days she seems to find the fact that he wants her in proximity almost amusing. He comes up with outlandish reasons to have her work downstairs and she chooses to humor him. Other days she can't seem to get away far enough away – from him, this house and perhaps even her own skin.

That day in the lab was one of the latter. There'd been a hunger about her that afternoon - like she was ready to swallow the entire world whole. His touch had been enough to make her jump when his flesh met hers. It was ironic, really since the contact hadn't even been meant to be remotely sexy or suggestive.

He hadn't kissed her and they hadn't been dancing. For that matter he hadn't even been looking at her, he'd been studying what was on his workbench. He'd simply put a hand out to receive a screwdriver from her as he used the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to pinch down on a bit of wiring.

Their hands had brushed and she'd jolted like she'd received a shock. Her breath had caught and she'd dropped the screwdriver to the floor as her eyes had rose to his face and she'd simply stared at him.

He'd tried to make a joke about the perils of static electricity, but the words had fallen flat. The world had shifted subtly after that moment, something had begun to build.

The closest analogy he could think of was what happened just before a particularly violent rainstorm, when Mother Nature crept in lightning shaped patterns across any exposed skin.

It was lust and want and sex: but there was more to it than that. It was the feeling of something not finished, something terribly undone.

Had it been any other woman, he would have simply turned to kiss her. He would have lifted her against the wall and led with his instinct to make her shudder and gasp and scream. He would have touched her until she'd released the pressure he could see mounting in her eyes, and he would have hoped that afterwards both of them could actually breathe.

His instincts where Pepper Potts were concerned though, appeared to be dormant - and that silence, in light of her own, was starting to look like it was going to deafen both of them.

Something was going to give between them very soon, and it might even be his sanity.

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8

Her day begins with heartburn and a pounding headache. It's not so much a sign of migraine as it is a symptom of exhaustion: a night with too many dreams and not enough sleep. Such things can only be covered with concealer and coffee a limited number of times before they simply can't be contained any longer. The nausea is lingering and it is making her fell sluggish, but she presses on anyway, swinging her feet out of bed.

There's enough work at the office for her and eleven other people, and her overloaded inbox has never cared if she wants to puke her guts out or not.

She feels like a fighter who's gone six rounds of boxing. She feels like she's been secretly beaten and then just left there to lie on the floor while the referee counts out the time.

'Ten nine eight...' Not gone but close enough to call the match and hear the buzzer ring in the time. She can feel the gears grinding in the clock that twirls in the back of her head: sooner or later they were going to seize up and send everything flying into various corners of whatever room she happened to be in.

When that happens she doubts that even a super genius is going to be able to fix what was left. If there is anything left at all.

She is beginning to doubt that even that will be the case by the end.

She take a shower and put her shoes on, then turns the bathroom lights up to full and regards herself in the mirror. The face that stares back isn't going to be as easy to triage as it had been yesterday morning, but today she is six screaming nightmares more tired and down to less than two hours of sleep.

Yesterday had been wonderful: she'd hoped that it meant that they were turning a corner. Hell maybe they had been or maybe it had just been a temporary reprieve so that she could enjoy one more day of ignoring the inevitable.

She wasn't going to be able to put off certain things all that much longer. Even Tony Stark had to know by now that something was not only changed, but undeniably wrong.

He was scared and she could feel it in her head. It was a thin razor sharp glimmer of knowledge that wove in deep to her temple like a shimmering chord of silver.

And if she kept ignoring the fact they were both going to wind up dead.

It was funny, for years now she'd accepted she had certain gifts...but she'd never expected this outcome, not in any of her wildest imaginings or bravest of days.

She desperately wishes her mother was still alive: yearns for her aid and her counsel. It's a little bit ironic really since she's spent the better part of her childhood and adolescence calling the woman a nutcase...Amelia Virginia Potts could not be psychic.

Pepper Potts couldn't be one of her family's infernal 'blessed ones' either, except apparently she was.

'Well think of it this way...you actually were a late bloomer.' It was an insane thing to think considering her headlong rush into puberty. She'd been four foot eight at twelve and five foot nine at thirteen, complete with a set of curves that had made the boys stare and her want to hide in her room. "You're not done yet, my dear," had been her mother's bizarre prediction. At the time she'd been terrified that meant she was going to acquire her mother's mammoth bosom and pimpled complexion.

She'd gotten neither of the above though; just two more years of confused looks by her mother before the woman had shook her head and apparently stopped looking for whatever was supposed to be there.

She isn't psychic, and she tells herself that every day. If she happens to dream the future and anticipate people unusually well, well it is just an uncanny business instinct. After all psychics read the future out of crystal globes and tell fortunes for pocket change. They certainly didn't collect three inch high heels or work for men who lived atop the fortune 500.

She doesn't read people's minds and she doesn't tell them who is going to win the superbowl: instead, she keeps an impenetrable schedule and an impossible man from falling to literal pieces.

If she's happened to know...know from the day she walked into his office just how far she can push him in a given situation, it has only been because she can read body language really well...

The lies have always worked: she's been comforted and he's been ignorant. He's certainly had never had reason to suspect. It wasn't until the third time she'd seen him walk into the living room wearing an outfit she'd seen only in her dreams that she'd allowed to herself to even consider that it might be something more.

His abduction in Afghanistan had been a living nightmare of pain in her chest and dreams she'd known were a distant reality. His return had been a mixture of relief and agitation that had never settled into something more soothing. There had been the night he saw her...really saw her for the first time at the fundraiser, and there'd been the time she'd helped him change out the arc reactor and nearly shuddered at the energy she'd felt creeping over both of their skins.

She'd tried to avoid intimate contact after that, and she'd hoped it would be enough. She'd never imagined that genuine words could turn her away from leaving when she should have been out the door and ten miles down the road before he ever started speaking.

She never in all her wildest dreams imagined that a mere brush of fingers to fingers could kindle this bond in the back of her head and spin the rest of her world into a screaming maelstrom of need.

She is falling; there are simply no other words to describe it. Her life is in freefall and she has no armored suit to plot a new a course or keep from splattering all over the pavement. The same relief that she'd felt to see him walk out of an airplane has morphed into something else: not just a hunger, but a necessity.

Tony is just...well...Tony. Tornado Stark. He is brilliance and impulse melded with pure mechanical talent and gut-driven morality. There is little hope of changing him - which is why she is now drowning in a sea that has no above or below, just a endless expanse.

He is fire and she is the opposite: She is reserve and propriety and the need to consider the consequences of every thought and every action.

She is the fencepost that keeps you off the grass, and he is the weed whacker that half the time is attacking the wrong set of bushes.

She wants him. She is tired of pretending it is otherwise. She wants his voice and his smile and his breath - and oh lord she wants his skin.

She wants to feel his arms around her shaking shoulders and she wants to just let go for fifteen seconds.

They have a psychic link forming: her mother told her enough for her to realize that much. It is there and it is trying to complete whatever it wants between them, and it isn't happy that she is fighting the process.

The most sensible girl in the world needs to find a way to tell the universe's biggest emotional ditz that they need to have sex or her head is going to try and explode in retribution.

Well that or she is going to have to quit.

She gets in her car and takes a wild guess which of those options she'll probably pick.


	2. Chapter 3

He feels someone staring at him, and he turns around. Pepper is standing outside the glass that encloses the garage, and the look in her eyes stops his heart. Something has pushed her too far; she's a woman standing on the edge of the cliff and deciding that the final impact should be enough to do the job.

He's out of his chair and across the room in an instant. Her eyes aren't tracking and it's not until he opens the door that they even focus on him completely.

"Pepper -" Heat flares and the air is suddenly charged. She takes that one step that separates him and she's suddenly _there_, her mouth fastened to his as if the contact is absolutely necessary to maintain her life.

The kiss is heat and passion for all of eight and a half seconds, and then she pulls back and all but doubles over as if she's in physical pain. "I...I _quit_." She manages to force out, and then she turns to flee the basement.

Her foot is on the first stair and she's making the step for the second when his hand closes around her wrist yanks her back. He catches her when she loses her balance - what kind of superhero wouldn't? - but she's can't be grateful. Not even the tiniest bit.

She can't be here, she can't _do_ this, and if she doesn't leave she's either going to explode or crumble and she's not sure she can stand the idea of forcing him to endure the experience of either.

"Let me go." She mutters the words even as she struggles, but he's stronger and he's stubborner and he's moving toward the couch on the far end of the room .

She can't see him but she knows he's pissed. She can't imagine what else he could possibly be.

'You're an idiot.' She's screwed it up big time. She's just come into the basement without so much as a 'hello and good morning' and blown their dynamic to bits. She knows what he tastes like now. She's had her tongue in his mouth and her hands on his face. She knows what it feels like to _literally _assault him - to give away all reason until there's nothing left but the heat.

She'd panicked and she broken and now she's broken _them_. And knowing him, he's going to kill her, once he gets to wherever he thinks they should be going.

And her intentions had been better than that. She'd just meant to say goodbye.

He forces her to take a seat and then stands so close in front of her that her only option of escape is to bowl him over and she can't risk that. She can't chance touching him again. Her hands tingle, _itch_, with the need to hold him. Temptation is within reach and half of her is screaming with the need to give in. She fists the hands that are filled with traitorous want and shoves them into her lap.

She keeps her eyes on those hands, knowing that if she doesn't she will 1) never notice when she loses her fight with them and 2) she'll look at Tony instead and not seeing his face right now suits her just fine.

"You're not going to talk me out of this, Tony. I quit, I resign, I can't stand another moment of being trapped in the same room with you... I don't care which option you chose, the result's the same."

His hands slap down on her shoulders like he's afraid she's capable of bolting straight through his body. "What is _hell_ is going _on_?" he barks.

"I told you." Her voice is quiet, a direct contrast to his. "I quit."

He keeps one hand on her shoulder and uses his other to drag her chin up from where it sits nearly on her chest. "That is _not_ an explanation. That's you kissing the hell out of me without explanation and then turning chickenshit." She winces at the words even as she tries to keep from actually making eye contact in favor of staring over his shoulder. He's undaunted though, forcibly stepping what should have been impossibly closer. "Damnit, Pepper. You're going to _look at me_!"

"Please..." She's already lost control of her hands. They're reaching for him and she can't stop it because half of her doesn't want to stop it. So she redirects them, and wraps both hands around his wrist and pulls until his right hand is resting over the heart racing innside her chest. "Tony...I can't stay. I can't live like this." She presses into his hand like she can impale herself on it and stop the trembles that are starting to move through her body.

He drops to his knees and pins her back against the couch with his lips. "Fine...don't talk to me then. It was working better for both of us anyway." He's a bastard, and she should probably kill him. This could be considered assault if she hadn't been the one to iniate it.

She loathes herself for the advantage she's just volleyed into his court, because she knows that there's no second shot of defense now that he's lobbying it back. Tony is warm and in motion - his shirt is damp with sweat and he's breathing heavily. He's got grease on all of his knuckles and his lips are on her neck. She wobbles, shivers, shakes and then cries out at intensity of his lips below her right ear. She wonders in that moment if it's possible for her to come just from his breath on her skin. She's never been closer to finding out.

"_Talk to me, Potts,_" he orders again.

And she just wants to _kill him_. "_**I can't!"**_

"If you want me to let you out of here, you're going to have to, Pepper." His hands tighten on her hips as he pulls her toward him. "Because this fight or flight thing is getting old, and you're scaring the _shit_ out of me here."

He actually shakes her a little. "You've looked like you're halfway to dying for the last week and a half. What do you _expect_ me to do when you try and pull this damn crap?"

"Let me go," she pleads. But she can feel him beating at her - his breath, his heat, his words. And she doesn't really want him to let go. Her hands are dragging his down to the hem of her skirt. "Tony..."

"_I_ can't let you leave." He emphasizes. "Not like this. Not if it means that the price is I lose you."

"You don't want me," she promises. And then she kisses him because right now he does want her and she can't stand thinking about the words that will make him not want her.

"Isn't possible I don't," he manages just before her lips clash with his. There's nothing after that for at least several minutes. She's unaware of anything but the scrambling of desperate hands and the sweet agony of his lips and hands against her skin. She doesn't know how she ends up half naked before he does. She can't bring herself to care. Somewhere along the way they manage to invert their positions, till he's sitting on the couch and she's straddling his lap. In her head the link is singing as her hands rake up than down his back.

He shudders at the pressure against his spine and so she does it again.

He's hard underneath her and she moves in his lap. All reasons why this is a bad idea are trampled by the need for more. More skin, more kisses, more pressure, more everything. "Ready to talk yet?" His voice is a low evil chuckle as he strokes down her left side. His hand reaches up to cup her breast. She spasms, a little as his thumb and forefinger circle, then abruptly deliver a sharp tug to her oversensatized nipple.

She shudders and cries out and then she is _coming_ and he isn't even inside of her yet. It's so intense that her eyes are tearing, and she presses her lips to his desperately as she grinds down into him a little frantically because he _ought_ to be inside her.

That he's not is a torture in itself, almost enough to outweigh the pleasure. She doesn't know what to do, or what to do with herself. She's naked and trembling and so weak she can barely lift her head.

And even after what just happened - oh god what did they do? - a part of her wants to scramble backwards and run again.

"That shouldn't have happened," she says quietly, once again not daring to look Tony in the eyes. Her mind is in turmoil, though ironically this time it's entirely her own. There's peace inside of her for the first time in weeks even as she scrambles for her next move. "I don't suppose we can forget this hap-"

He shifts his hips upwards trying his best not to moan. "Forgive me, Pepper if I don't think that particular horse is going back in the barn." He sighs, very deeply then lays his head back against the cushions behind him as if he's trying to make his head clear.

He closes his eyes, shakes his head, and drops his hands to her hips. "So _now_ are you ready to talk to me?"

She draws a deep breath. Surrenders. "You're going to think I'm a total lunatic."

"Pepper…" His voice is chiding...

"No. I'm serious. And this isn't the kind of thing I can explain while I'm on your lap. Let me up." His hands tighten around her waist. She groans. "I promise I won't run. I just need my clothes."

She isn't about to have this conversation naked. It's going to make her vulnerable enough without adding that.

She knows exactly how reluctant he is to let her go, but he does and she keeps her own movements slow as she pushes down her skirt and slips back into her shirt. She tosses him his own t-shirt – which he in turn tosses over the back of the couch – before doing up the buttons on hers and taking a careful seat on the opposite end of the sofa.

"No - you stay over there," she says when he leans towards her. "Just give me my space, Stark." She hunts for the right words, all the while feeling his impatience build up like steam in an old engine.

Well...since the right words probably didn't exist anyway, she might as well spit it out before he blew a gasket. "I'm kinda...I'm kinda a psychic." She doesn't let herself look away from him. He has to know _exactly_ how serious she is.

He blinks at those words, and then he opens his mouth and tilts his head like he's going to say something really snarky, but then he obviously thinks better of it. He looks at her hard before speaking with great care.

"And you haven't mentioned this before why?" His tone isn't scoffing, isn't violent or confrontation. If anything he looks curious. He _doesn't_ look like he's mentally sizing her for a straightjacket, which is pretty much what she has been expecting.

Still it's such a complicated question it makes her want to whimper a little.

"Well...probably because I don't necessarily enjoy feeling like a freak. I mean, there's a time and place for that, and working for you is _almost_ like working for the circus, but –"

"Psychic precisely how?" His voice sternly cuts off her babble, seeking further information.

"Umm..." She curses herself for her inelegant tongue. "I...I read people pretty well. Their behavior, not their minds. Empathic, I guess is the best word. And I have dreams. Sometimes they come true. Sometimes they don't."

If he kept staring at her that way, his eyes were going to dry out. "Come true...as in foresight?"

She shakes her head. "No...foresight is when you see one assuredly true path path, I tend to see three or four. Unless it's actually happening or about to happen. Then iit's more like a live action viewing." She clears her throat and gestures to his chest plate. "When they put in your electromagnet, Tony, they should have given you more anesthetic."

He looks stunned, like she'd just admitted that she'd been the one with her hand in his chest then too.

"I didn't know until it was happening," she whispers quickly. "If I'd had _any_ idea, Tony, I would have said something before you'd left. I would have tried to warn you." The truth of it was that she hadn't even acknowledged the dreams were anything more than _dreams_ until he'd come back with the one proof of her gift that even she couldn't rationalize her way out of.

He's still sitting there, wordless and motionless. "And there's more," she adds miserably as she watches his face.

"Is this why you've been walking around the house like a ghost?" He asks after a moment, and she knows by the tone of his voice that he's finally getting angry. "You're going through hell and maybe I can _help_ and you didn't even _tell me_!?"

"It's more than just help, Tony." She can't believe he's listening to her. And believing her. That he's pissed is almost a relief. "I'm...a little more attuned to you than I am to most people."

His head snaps up at those words and she can see him put the pieces together. He's rising off the couch and striding toward her with an intensity to his movements that she's never seen before. "Spit it out, Pepper. Explain how my kissing your God damn neck can be enough to make this better." Because it is better... She can actually breathe.

For the first time in a week she feels no physical pain.

"No!" She puts the couch between them. "I mean, yes, it helped. _Temporarily_. You have to listen to me before you come any closer!" He pauses and watches her like he's already decided to disregard everything she's about to say.

"As I said it helped. Temporarily. Because I'm so damned sensitive to you. I've been telling myself all my life that I'm just perceptive, and I intentionally turned that 'perceptiveness' on you, so I could do my job better. So I could...know what it was you needed. And now I can't stop. I can't flip the damned switch and make myself oblivious to you again. This happens sometimes." His eyes flare. "No, I'm not speaking from personal experience. This whole...talent...is a family trait, I guess. My mom used to talk about things like this happening. And she used to say that sometimes two people can form a link, even if one or both of them isn't psychic in some matter. But the whole empathic thing just makes the link stronger…

She draws in a deep breath, "And if...and if we sleep together, it'll help with the headaches, but the link will solidify and the attachment will kinda be permanent."

The words draw him up short, but not barely by much. He's like a dog being held back by a tether, and she can see him straining against the restraint. She can see the tension in his face and the conflict in his eyes as he tries to take a deep breath, tries to focus and concentrate. "You...you _need_ this." He says it like it's the only words he can get through his brain. She's beginning to wonder if they are.

He just sounds so certain. And suddenly one of her mother's old lectures finally come back, with one particular statement from one particular talk physically smashing into the conscious part of her brain.

"You do have a talent, Virginia. All of the women in your family have it. You may not know what it is yet, but it's going to come out sooner or later. So stop rolling your eyes. I know that I'm right - because of your wonderful mathematical brain. Inspiration is empathy, Virginia, just in another form. Those who are as good as you are with numbers always have their own kind of gifts."

'Mathematical brain.' "Oh _my God_. I'm such an _idiot_! _God_," she moans. "This is all my _fault_."

Apparently this is more than Tony can take, because he's suddenly there, his hands are rubbing up and down her arms and her head is resting against his chest. He doesn't have to ask what's wrong. "People with similar talents bond the best," she moans.

She doesn't know how long they stand there, only that it seems a short eternity. She can feel his heart under her palm, and feel the heat from the smooth arc reactor. They're still standing there only partly clothed...her with her shirt out of her skirt and with him no shirt and his pants hardly zipped.

She waits for the inevitable humiliation. Waits for him to say something appropriately scathing. What she doesn't expect is that he's going to start laughing, so much it nearly knocks them both off their feet. She tries to shrug him off because right now she's in so much turmoil that she can't even guess at what he finds so amusing and she wants to be able to see his face if nothing else because this isn't at all the reaction she'd been expecting.

But he just holds her closer and laughs like he's heard the world's funniest joke or like he's the happiest man on the planet. "Care to let me in on the joke?" she asks sourly once his belly laughs slow to chuckles.

He lifts his head, and his dark eyes are clear. "I thought…I thought I was losing my _mind_," he confesses after a moment. "Ever since the other day in the lab...I can half feel your _brain, _Pepper." He'd thought he was going absolutely _crazy_.

He doesn't explain anymore than that, though she knows she's going to have to make him do so later. He's too hysterical and to eager and too desperate for her to get him to do anything except maybe kiss her again.

Speaking of which, she realizes to her bewilderment, she is going to have to do some serious self defense on her clothing, or she was about to lose her skirt.

"Weren't you listening to me?" she demands as she reaches for the zipper he's trying to pull down. "You, me, and sex equals _permanence_, Tony. As in, 'forever and ever amen.'" Also as in 'until death do us part,' but even the _concept_ of that was too frightening to think, much less say aloud. "And I don't know what else might happen."

He lifts his hands to enfold the back of her neck, digging his fingers into the knots that are threatening to turn her head into another throbbing ball of pain. "And the other option is what? This week? Which I spent in _hell_. Put a ring on my finger."

He starts going after the buttons on her shirt with an intensity that could have been frightening. His grin is all smirk and all teeth. "You have ten seconds to try and talk me out of this, Potts, and then I'm going to ignore you."

"Things could also intensify and...spread." She grabs his hands and entwines her fingers with his. "I'm serious, Tony. And this is a lot to hear at once. I don't think this is the time to look before you leap. This isn't the only solution."

"Eight seconds, Potts." He leans forward. "Because judging by the dumbass shit you tried to pull earlier, the only other options involve leaving me." He leans forward then and in licks the skin that's immediately below her ear.

"It would solve my...dilemma...without further complicating things." She tries again without much success.

"If this problem of yours is supposed to get better when you aren't around me, you should look better every morning when you come in, or at least after the weekends when you've gone two days. But you're tiredest when you get to the office…and worst of all on Monday mornings. Your little bond isn't forming, Pepper, it's _there_. And you're down to two seconds to argue."

"I'm not sure I _want _this. I'm not sure how many more dreams of you possibly dying I can take." It's the only thing she can think to say, and really the only thing that's truly holding her back.

The words, for the first time since he touched her actually manage to stop him cold. His muscles tense to steel like he's still inside his suit. He pulls back and reads the truth in her face. She's never seen hope die so fast, or so completely in the whole of her life.

"You're that afraid." It looks like she's stabbed him with a knife.

"I-I knew the first time you went out in your suit," she whispers. "Why do you think I was here when you got back? You came in so late. And I kept telling myself that if you were back, then you couldn't possibly dead. But when I saw all those bullet holes I didn't understand why you weren't."

"It's ballistic level _armor_. Pepper. Its prototype is what got me home. I understand that you get scared when I go out there, but that suit does exactly what it is supposed to and I know what I'm doing."

He says it with absolute surety, and with absolute conviction. A force of belief that makes anything seem possible given apporpriate belief.

That is his gift, she realizes in that instant. And he could no more deny its use or nature than she could deny hers. "You will find what you are meant for when you look" her mother's voice echoed in her ear. "But Ginny, to look and believe will require your _faith."_

Well faith had never .come easy to her, but under the circumstances, she had absolutely no chance but to try.

"I worry about you, all the time," she whispers. "But I'm also very proud of the man you've become." She hopes she knows what she's talking about, hopes he understands what she's trying to say.

He leans forward then and rubs his nose against hers. "You're out of time Pepper. Point, Draw and Match."

Then he's there and he's hard and he's kissing her, and god they have too many _clothes _on.

She runs the fingers of one hand through his hair and drags the fingers of the other hand down his chest. She loops around his reactor once, than moves down his chest. She flattens her hand against his belly and his skin is so hot. God, she can feel his anticipation as she reaches for the fly of his jeans, and it only ratchets up her own.

"Upstairs." He murmurs. "We're finding a bedroom. For one thing I'm itch and this place reeks of grease. For another..." His eyes sparkle wickedly. "This is exactly why I installed that new hot tub when I got back."

"Hot tub?" She bits her lip and runs her gaze over his body. "…Okay."

He snickers at her easy acceptance, starts side stepping them toward the stairway. "Sure, make me fight for it, why don't you, Potts." The remark earns him a direct and stinging smack to the ass.

"Hey!" He bellows in protest then pouts. "See if I try and be sappy or at least romantic again."

"Oh, so things are going to return to some semblance of normal then."

His hand slips under her skirt to cup her ass. "You do realize I'm going to retaliate for that."

"I wouldn't expect anything less out of you, Mr. Stark."

"Yes well, Mrs. Stark, you know me well." He smirks at the stunned look on her face. "What, you didn't catch the marriage proposal before?"

"But I'm...and you're... Why do you think we could possibly make that work?"

"We already do...look at the life that we're living. Besides, In case you missed it, you pretty much defined marriage before, Pep. It's just that sex was last." He wrinkles his nose a little "Which as a general lifestyle choice I intend to change. I don't know about you Pepper but I've always much preferred to eat my dessert first."


	3. Chapter 4

Tony Stark has always prided himself on many things. His intelligence, his appearance, his creative mind and his incomparable drive. He's known for most of his life that he wasn't and never will be anything even remotely resembling ordinary.

As a young man he'd hated that fact some days, and loved it on others. Because there were days when he'd wanted nothing more than to be normal and have only the potential allotted to anyone else. As he'd aged though he'd simply acknowledge some things were as they were, and would be impossible to change.

He is who he is, and he makes peace with that fact at the beginning of every day.

Pepper though...god, she's still a little dazed, as if she's still trying to accept her own beyond the ordinary talents. She's walking by his side but her mind is a thousand miles away. He knows that without seeing her eyes, without observing more than her body language. She looks like she' been stunned, and yet ironically she also looks better than she has in days.

And all the panic - the inexpressible uneasiness that' s been making him insane - is finally calming for the first time in weeks.

'She needs to be touched.' It is a strange kind of revelation. It is the last thing he'd expected, and a truth he almost can't bring himself to believe. This type of thing isn't supposed to happen outside of books. Life doesn't give you what you want just because you want it, at least not in his previous experience.

That doesn't change what happened though... and it doesn't negate what has just happened. It just makes him wonder what the hidden cost will be in the end.

Then he looks at the woman beside him, sees the paleness her makeup doesn't quite cover and the terrible looseness of her clothes on her body. And he wonders if maybe the price hasn't already been paid with somethign far far worse than money.

He reaches out and wraps his arm around her waist -he pulls her closer to him so that her hip brushes his as they walk. And just like in the garage she relaxes. "Tony, I still don't think you fully comprehend what I'm trying to tell you." Her tone isn't as defensive as her words would indicate. She just sounds...bemused. As if they're discussing yet another incident where he's forged blindly on and she's already planning the best way to go about damage control.

"You have...well I would guess the best worda are psychic based gift. You use it around me a lot, and though it wasn't purposeful we've developed a sort of mental affinity. That resulted in some kind of connection that makes it hard when we're too far apart. Does that cover it, or do I need to keep on going?"

She shrugs a little. "Mom used to call whatever this is a 'bond.' But Tony this isn't something to mess around with...it can have serious ramifications..."

He snorts. "Yes, and the fact that you've spent the last two weeks barely able to function wasn't a pretty good clue to that, Pepper."

"Tony... It can get stronger." She says in frustration.

"You say that as if I actually _care_."

She laughs and just shakes her head. "Worst case scenario," she tells him. "Absolutely worst case scenario is that if one of us dies, then so does the other."

He groans and stops in the middle of the hallway. "Pepper, tell me you did more than just _breathe_ when I was in Afghanistan and I might be slightly more worried about that." As far as comments go, it's not particularly gentle. He's never brought this up, but neither of them can risk pretending he doesn't know the truth.

He and Rhodey have had some enlightening conversations about quite a large number of things.

"I couldn't get out of bed for the first twenty four hours," she admits. "And then even after I slept I couldn't make myself eat for the next 48. That was how long it took the pain to die down enough to function."

"Rhodey was half afraid you were going to shatter. He seriously considered calling a doctor to your house. Instead he played an instinct and moved your back to the mansion thinking the work right thre would be useful in helping you cope."

And it had helped, at least a little. Though they would never know if that was because she'd glutted on the memories there, or he'd finally stabilized after his surgery.

He didn't like the ramifications of her health being so directly linked to his, but if nothing else she had just managed what she wants the most. He'll be much, much more careful with his own physical safety when he goes out on his regular missions.

She breathes deeply then pulls his arm closer around her waist. "As long as you understand, I will stop fighting." That she doesn't have the strength to fight without destroying herself doesn't need to be said by either of them.

He brings up the arm that's been around her wait to stroke the back of her neck, just the barest of contact as he watches her response. "So...we're really doing this." It's not a question. "Is there anything we need to talk about first, Pepper? I mean health or comfort level wise..."

"Immediate or future concerns?" she asks with a furrowed brow. "I don't I understand what you're asking."

the edges of his mouth turn up. "We're about to have sex, Pepper. Or at least I assume that we're going to. I would think that that fact mandates a discussion on subjects such as personal limits and birth control."

Tony tries to keep his tone light and none judgmental, but it doesn't negate her natural talent for blushing... "I'm on the pill," she mumbles. "And I find it unlikely that either of us could do anything that would make the other uncomfortable."

He chuckles a little. "Do you want me to use a condom? Because I'm clean according to my most recent tests, but it' been more than six months now."

She shakes her head. "I don't think you need to be worried. Though you should of course, go in and get checked because 'My girlfriend told me I was clean' won't stand up to any scrutiny."

"There hasn't been anyone since that day we talked on your birthday, and I got my results mailed to me early that morning. I'm just asking because sometimes I do actually pay attention..." He pauses. "You're allergic to latex, Pepper. And since I've only got that kind here, if you don't want to use them we need to make a trip to the store."

She shakes her head. "I'm on the pill. I'm clean. You're clean. The stolen blood they had to transfuse you with was clean, and the doctor boiled all the needles and let them soak in alcohol. I think we're okay."

He smiles. "Then we should be good to go. Though remind me sometime to find out if you're also hypoallergenic enough to tolerate my favorite brand of peppermint massage oil..."

"Tony?" She cuts off his babbling this time. "You do notice that we've been standing outside your bedroom door for the last three minutes, didn't you?"

He chuckle softly. "I'm in no hurry. I cancelled your entire appointment book for the next two days around ten o'clock last night." She gapes and he shakes his head. "I just couldn't take it anymore, Pepper...either way when you arrived today we were going to have something out."

She doesn't bother marveling that they both felt things come to a head on the same day. These things are going to be happening more and more frequently. Besides, now that they're here she's having a hard time focusing on anything other than the _reason_ that they're here. There's a roaring in the back of her head pushing her forward.

"Yes, well we're going to have something else out now," she threatens as she steps into him and tugs at the shirt hanging open from his shoulders. "And we'd probably be more comfortable in a bed."

"I take it then you decided I don't need a shower or a bath first?" He smirks as he gestures to his dirty clothes.

She shrugs "I kind of like it when you're all greasy."

He smirks. "Then I suggest we make you complimentary by getting you all nice and wet." Then he's stepping forward to grasp her hips and pull her up against his unashamed erection.

Her eyes flutter closed and she breathes deeply as she slides against him. When her lids slowly open there's a little bit of wildness in them. "Bed or shower, Pepper. You get last call. But make it quick."

"We're going to need a bed." Her fingers weave through his belt loops and she jerks him towards her. "I dislike wasting time, Tony. I see no point in getting clean now when we'll just need to shower again later."

He nods a little. "A bed it is." He pushes the door open and leads her into the bedroom. "Though in the name of candor, you might want to pick a room other than this one. I tend to forget to clean up in here and it's been ages since I last changed the sheets."

"I'm just going to have to get used to that, aren't I?" she asks. "Lord knows I'm not going to become your personal maid. As long as you keep the mess contained to your side of the room though, I'll try not to nag."

Despite her words Pepper's stripping off his shirt and dropping it without noticing where it falls. Beneath her lips Tony smiles. Reaching for the buttons of her own clothes, he starts to strip her methodically. "Just go easy, okay, Potts. Because as much as I like the adrenaline rush, I refuse to let our first time be a quickie."

Pepper slips out of her heels before shoving her skirt and panties off her hips. And then she does the same of him, though she keeps the pace torturously slow as she slides his jeans off. He's wearing a pair of soft, heather grey cotton boxers that emphasize almost as much as they cover.

"What? No silk boxers?" she teases him softly.

He snorts. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm half hard most days already."

"Overactive libido?" she quips, hoping he doesn't take it the wrong way.

He shrugs, "You try working around a person you're that attracted to when she constantly smells like you do. After that benefit it took me a _week_ just to talk to you without getting instantly hard."

"Tony, I understand." She teases him by leaving the boxers where they are as she presses up against him. She hums deep in her throat at the satisfaction of skin on skin. Hell yes, she understands. She's been fighting this since that brush of his fingers against hers weeks ago.

"Unless you were about ten seconds away from getting arrested for public groping, Pepper, I'm not sure that you do."

"Tony, every time I've been around you, I've been feeling your desire _and_ mine." She starts nibbling at his neck as her hands hold his hips still for her to gently thrust against.

He pauses a moment, and then gulps a little. "That night at the benefit?" he asks a little carefully. She nods, blushing again and he cusses. "Damn it, and I wondered where in hell all the fear seemed to be coming from."

"And I didn't kiss you because I couldn't tell which one of us wanted it more." She laughs a little because his hands are crawling over her body but he hardly notices. "You'd changed. That night wasn't the usual 'Hey, Pepper's kinda hot,' attention you usually gave me."

"Yes, well I felt like somebody had kicked me in the gut. I swear Pepper, if Christine hadn't blindsided me with those photos..." He shakes his head.

"I know..." Pepper tells him softly. "I...your hand brushed my back when I leaned in to kiss you. I kind of got a preview..." Or a preview of what might have happened at least...

After that moment, she'd really, really needed that Martini, if just to take the edge off.

"Though, I am getting a little tired of seeing all the previews and always missing out on the main show." She grinds against the erection trapped between them, leaves both of them gasping.

"That I can help with," he murmurs into her ear as he lifts her up and presses her not into the mattress, but the open bedroom door.

Her eyes flare and she nods. Then she bends her head forward and bites at his bottom lip, chewing delicately before thrusting her tongue deeper in.

The touch of her tongue against his own sends a shock through the both of them. And in the back of her head Pepper feels something start to throb, almost like it had before. But where yesterday the pain had been insistent and building in pressure, this is slow and almost languid...and every bone in her body seems to want to turn to jelly.

In front of her Tony actually wobbles. "What in hell was that?" His voice is hoarse and more than a little breathy.

"I have no idea," she admits. "Though my mom would probably have had some New Age load of crap about the universe giving some kind of approval."

"Flower child?" Tony moans.

Pepper laughs a little softly. "Would this be a bad time to admit that I spent the first 10 years of my life in the southern Nebraska's only still active commune?"

He just laughs and kisses her again, shock be damned.

She kisses him back and her legs tighten around him. He knows she's ready, in part because her body is begging for him, but he also just _knows_. And he wonders how many other things he knows about her are due to things he doesn't really understand.

Of course, then she's bracing her shoulders against the wall while she angles her hips and he's suddenly _there_.

"Obsess over the technicalities _after_," she says with a low breathy moan. "Because Tony, I have to tell you, the constant influx of mathematical equations takes off the edge, but it's also a little _distracting_."

He laughs, because it's not strange to hear her tell him what's in his head. It ought to be, but it isn't, anymore than he finds it strange that he knows to hold her tightly by the ass while he slides into her.

And he swears - he _swears_ - that for a split second he knows _exactly_ what she feels. Not just emotionally but physically. And then it passes before he can lose all control. "My God. We are never going to leave the house." She's not sure if it's a warning or a promise.

He lifts her hips with his hands, circles her hips, and brings her back down against him. "Tony..." She gasps. And this time it's honesty impossible to tell if it's more pleasure, more pressure or more pain... He can feel her loss of restraint as she submerges beneath the pleasure, though he can't tell anymore if somehow he's picking up on what she's feeling or transmitting what he himself feels. This is...this is nothing like the basic physiological expression of sex that he's experienced hundreds of times. This is not just being aware of a partner's responses.

This is consuming in a way he's never experienced. This is feeling each gasp and hitch of breath, each moan and tremble of hers add to his own pleasure. This is knowing exactly when and how and where to touch with such certainty that he knows he could make love to her with his eyes closed. Not that he can figure out why he'd ever want to. Pepper is glorious as she gives herself over to whatever it is that's swamping them both. Her skin glows, and her body is all sinuous grace, and her face is more expressive than he's seen it in weeks.

And when she opens her eyes and stares at him he knows that even if permanence hadn't been part of the deal, he would have insisted on it at this point because in her eyes he can see peace, and love, and a future that is somehow tailored to him and no one else. Somehow she is _everything_ he hadn't been looking for present in a woman who'd always been there.

"Lock stock and barrel," he mutters to himself as he brings up a hand to cup each of her breasts.

When she comes, it sings down the bond, and the wash of sensation is so all consuming he nearly falls on his ass. If this is any indication, he acknowledges to himself, they're going to have to pretty much stick to being horizontal for this kind of thing.

He's a little startled that he hasn't come himself, but he's amazed to realize he's still hard and her hips are starting to quiver again.

"Tony?" His name is spoken on a whisper.

He makes his head pull back from where he's been sucking her earlobe to stare into her face.

"Bed," she orders him softly. And then she deliberately tightens around him.

It's about all he can do to move them over to the bed without dropping her to the floor or falling over on top of her. He sits down carefully, Pepper still in his lap, her hips still pulled tight to his. He groans and tilts his head back as she rolls her thumbs over his nipples and she immediately starts suckling at the place where neck and shoulder meet.

He gives in, lays back and tangles his hands in her hair as she crawls over him and stakes her claim. It certainly feels as if he's been claimed as she rakes her fingers across his abdomen. His erection jerks inside of her and they both moan as she angles her hips to take him deeper.

"Pepper..." He holds her close because he doesn't know what else to say or do. "I. Love. You." The words are gritted in what is definitely pleasure, but what might also be pain.

And then it feels like something actually _burns _into place in his head, and he's crying and coming and holding her like he can't bear the thought they might actually be separate bodies.

Her face, as he looks up into it, shows exactly the same thing, though there's also shock there and the smallest trace of fear. And he doesn't mind the fear because he knows it's because she's suddenly without control, but that's alright. She can't always be in control, no one can, and at least she's not alone.

But she's coming again too and it distracts him because it's so _perfect_. From the arch of her spine to the tone of her voice to the sensation of her body demanding everything he has to offer and then some...

He's panting, aware that tears are still seeping from the corners of his eyes as she collapses on top of him. Her body trembles atop his and he forces his arms around her to keep her steady. His head is clearer than it's been in a long time despite the physical lethargy taking him over.

"Pepper..." he says softly. "If you were deliberately holding back on that, I may have to strangle you." He hasn't felt this good since the first time he took the Mark II suit out for its first joyride and he finally pulled out of that freefall.

To his complete and utter shock the woman in his arms begins to cry.

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Somehow Tony's acceptance and desire for a new and _renewed_ relationship is what cements the bond in place. She feels his determination to claim what existed between them, and it's what pushes her to her first climax. But his continued determination after he's felt part of what could be between them has pushed everything beyond the point of no return.

Though she's tried. She's tried to fight it because at this last minute she is terrified of everything that might come after, because _this moment_ changes everything.

It isn't just her that is being changed, or him, but things that she can only feel and will never be able to name. Somehow the entire world has realigned without her consent and she's had no choice but to accept it or break herself in the denial. And when Tony has already opened himself to it, what other choice does she have? God, she doesn't know much, doesn't remember much of those talks with her mother, but she does know that some kind of half formed, half acknowledged bond will be worse than what they've been living with. And she can't stand another moment of his pain on top of hers.

She's followed him, because he's led the way. And his pleasure in being lost in completely unknown territory is too much. Because obviously he thinks she has some idea of what is coming next and she doesn't.

And it is just too much. Pepper can't keep from crying, although she isn't sad. She is simply overwhelmed on every possible level. The last few months have just been too much, and all the control she's held over the emotion had finally given way.

And so she cries, while the man below her looks on in terror. She cries like a newborn, which she supposes in some ways she is. She lays there atop of him and she shakes, because the world had crumbled down, and she is bruised on every inch of her emotional skin.

She weeps because there's simply nothing else left to do.

"Pepper. _Pepper_." Tony is speaking. He half sits up and cradles her tightly, rocking them both back and forth in a futile attempt to comfort.

"You made me kill you!" she wails into his chest. "We were fighting Stane in the warehouse and we hadn't even kissed, but I had seen _everything _Tony, we were as good as lovers, and you made me push a button when I knew it would kill you!"

She'd never..._never_ hated him more than she had in that moment. Of course she'd never loved him more in the ones that followed right after. But still the dichotomy had killed her...the act of having and not having all in one space and time.

"I won't...I can't keep doing this," she tells him desperately. She can't lose him without having him, because it isn't fair. "I'm not doing this." She pounds against his chest. "Not doing it ever again." She's told him all or nothing. She should have told him all or dead. Because that was all she had left. There was no gray area anymore for either of them to actually stand in.

His hands are gentle as they wrap around her wrists and restrain her. "Pepper...shhh..." His lips brush over her face. "It's alright. I'm right here. You're not in this alone. You're _never_ going to be alone."

The certainty in his voice is so strong that makes her insides quake. "You don't know that," she whispers. "You don't know what I've seen. You're just so reckless...and the consequences echo. One day you're going to react without thinking, and then you're finally going to die."

She has _seen_ it, on a thousand different occasions. And he wonders why she is so reluctant to name this thing that is between them. "I've seen it you know, a thousand times over. How many more times will I have to wake up at night and not pick up the phone...pretend not to be insane when I see you the next morning and I can't even touch you?"

"Pepper, you're clinging to the way things were." Tony's voice is firm. It's his 'this is how things are going to be' voice, the one that usually scares her because he is going to insist on doing something impossible...but usually right anyway. "There will be no calling me in the middle of the night because most nights I will be right beside you. There will be no pretending because I will be right here. And if I ever think you're keeping yourself from touching me when you need to, I really _will_ strangle you." He shakes her gently. "We just went through that hell. I'm not letting either of us repeat it."

He forcibly lifts her head, till she's staring right at him, and there's a peace in his eyes that she's never seen before. "And I'm _not_ going to die. Because although I am reckless, it's not just me out there that I'm risking anymore."

He kisses the eyelids she closes in an effort to close him out. "Pepper...you have been the most precious thing in my life for months now. Don't tell me you didn't know. The only reason I insisted you overload the generator was because it was the only way to stop Stane. And if he hadn't been stopped, he would have come after _you_ when he was finished with me. Because I was losing that fight, Pepper. I wasn't going to ask you to surrender your life as well because I'd been foolish."

"There isn't a life without you." Her eyes snap open. And she's appalled by the fact that for all her effort, she can not shut up. "I tried it, Tony...for nearly three months. And if it had lasted another three I would probably have put a bullet in my head." His eyes widen in shock, but she can't take the words back. As much as she hates it, there's too much truth in them.

"This company...this _job_, it doesn't work without you. I could have kept things upright awhile, but the foundations were already starting to crumble beyond repair. I keep things afloat awhile, I make them more stable, but I can't fix what's irreparably broken..." She doesn't know where these words are coming from, she just knows they're all true.

"Leave the broken things to me. You know how much I love restoring old junk." He's referring to a few of the cars in his collection, but her eyes widen as if his words have another significance. "Pepper, from my understanding of what you said... Hell, from my understanding of what I _felt_, 'without' is no longer a concept that applies to our lives."

"So what? I'm supposed to be glad that I'll die or go crazy at the same time that you do? That's not a comfort when you consider how may times you were supposed to _already_." Her eyes narrow at him. "Do you know what it feels like to have your balls ripped off? Because I _do_, Tony...and I don't even have the equipment!"

He winces. "I hope you're speaking metaphorically and not about one your almost-futures," he mutters. Then he shakes his head and looks at her. _Really_ looks at her. There's gears turning behind his eyes like he's searching his mind for the data needed to convince her.

"This is permanent," he reminds her. "So it's time to stop fighting it, Pepper. If it was almost destroying you before, it'll certainly manage it now. I don't care what you have to do to make your peace with how things are. Hell, I don't care if you have to wake me up or call me after every single dream of daydream or idle fantasy you have that concerns me if it's what it takes for you to be comfortable. But there's no backing out, only going forward. So get that into your head right now.

"Secondly, I don't know if you give yourself enough credit, Pepper. Twice I've been on the verge of death and twice I've heard you calling my name. Once was one the roof when my arc reactor should have been fried beyond use...but it kept working. The first time was in Afghanistan, and I _know_ you weren't there."

But Pepper isn't listening, she's physically climbing off the top of him. And there's a fury in her eyes as she reaches for her shirt. "Fuck this. Fuck the whole damn universe. I'm going home, and finding somebody who can break this damn thing." She's scrambling into her shoes the precise moment he manages to get up from the bed.

"Like hell," Tony snarls as he grabs her shoulders and swings her around. She can feel his hands trembling on her shoulders but she doesn't know why because she can't tell up from down anymore. Though, from looking in his eyes, fury would be a safe bet.

"I admit you're responsible for saving my life and you decide you're immediately going to rip it away?" he demands. His body is crowding her, the heat of anger pouring off him in waves. "Pepper, I know you're scared, but _stop it_!"

She knows she should, knows she wants to, but her head's exploding and she just wants to scream. "I need to go _home_," she forces out. And then her eyes roll back and she drops to the floor like a brick.

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For the first hour Tony had held hope that Pepper had just...passed out. That a combination of too little food, too little sleep, too much stress and too much revelation have taken their toll and she'd simply temporarily overloaded. He'd gotten her into bed, had tenderly stroked her hair out of her face, and covered her up before pulling a chair over to the bedside to wait.

Sometime after the second hour he'd tried waking her up because he'd been uneasy by that point. He'd gotten no response and he'd had to stop touching her because there was something about the limpness of her body that disturbed him. Just looking at her has left him concerned. Touching her has only made things worse.

For a brief moment, a split second, he wishes he'd let her go. Wishes he'd let her try to find her way to separate them again. But then the fear and fury that she'd even threaten to attempt such a thing overwhelmed him so totally he doesn't know how long it'd taken him to fight it back.

Now, at hour four, he is still battling, though this time with his mind. He is an engineer, a scientist, a mechanic. And this is something intangible. It is something he can feel the breakage in but can't take apart to fix, can't even hold in his hands to find _where_ the break is.

Hell, six hours ago he wouldn't have even imagined that he could believe so fully in something he couldn't see, couldn't explain. But it was important.

'But how important?' he keeps asking himself. Is it worth risking Pepper? Did he want to be connected viscerally to a woman who fought that connection tooth and claw? Was being with her any better than being at arm's distance from her?

If he loved her, does he really have any right to force her to partake in something she doesn't want to?

The newly discovered part of himself screams and thrashes and resists...but the man he'd been yesterday - though disturbed - steps back to examine that question. Just what is Pepper worth to him? What is he willing to sacrifice to see her happy? What can he afford to sacrifice without harming both of them?

If her world has no purpose without him, as he knows his life has without her, then does he have any choice? Can he let her go knowing what he already knows? That any kind of distance between them is a threat to her safety and wellbeing. And he doesn't think it is necessarily the physical distance. He is pretty sure it is the emotional distance she's forced in between them that is hurting her so badly.

His head hurts. His chest hurts. He literally can't take deep breaths while she lays there unresponsive. Part of him knows this is more than simple unconsciousness because this isn't worry he is feeling; it is loss. It is him sitting on his couch, watching Stane walk away from him, knowing he is dying and leaving her unprotected.

He takes her hand because he doesn't know what else to _do_.

"Sir?" Jarvis speaks hesitantly into the silence. The AI sounds tired and maybe a little wary.

He supposes he owes his housekeeper an apology, he'd threatened to burn Jarvis's entire personality matrix less than half an hour ago.

"Old Man, I'm sorry...but we still can't call the police. They'll just call the ambulance and then what will we tell them without sounding _crazy_?"

"Sir, I am not concerned about that. I understand your choice and reasoning..."

"Than what is it?" He groans.

"You have a visitor down by the front gate."

Tony leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He's just...tired. He would lie down beside her, but something in him nags at him, telling him it's a bad idea.

"Who is it?" he eventually asks. "Because I'm not really in the mood for visitors, Jarvis."

"I thought as much and he is not on the schedule...but he's remained two hours and he is very insistent." Jarvis pauses, for a very long minute. "Sir the ID he showed is under the name Malcolm Keith-Bahyr. He's from a very small town in eastern Nebraska. And if the man is to be believed...well he claims to be Miss Virginia Pott's _father_."

Tony jerks upright at that. "Jarvis, patch him through from the gate."

About fifteen seconds later he's looking at a man who looks like he's in his late 50s, with sandy hair and a piercing set of grey blue eyes. "Let me _in_, Anthony," the man says brusquely. The words are out before he can even form a sentence. "Let me in before she _dies_ and takes you with her."

"Jarvis, open the gate." Tony gets out of the chair without hesitation and hurries to the front door.


	4. Chapter 5

Tony Stark has always prided himself on many things

He doesn't question whether or not this is the right thing to do, because this pretty much validates everything that he's heard or felt since Pepper shocked him with her kiss earlier this morning. He doesn't _care_ if this is Pepper's father or not. All that matters is that he apparently knows that Pepper's in trouble and he _knows what to do_.

The man who arrives from the driveway is tall and brunette; his long curly hair is pulled back in a ponytail. His clothes are rumpled and he looks like he's been traveling awhile. "Top of the stairs...right back hallway." Tony starts to tell him, but the man is already heading in that direction before he even finishes closing the front door. Tony follows him with hastened steps, but even so the other man is a good three inches taller. So he's amazed when he reaches Pepper at the same time that Malcolm does.

"How long?" The older man questions him distractedly when he finally speaks again. He's got a hand gently atop Pepper's forehead head.

"Four hours," Tony answers, assuming he means how long has Pepper been unconscious.

Malcolm shoots him a look of disgust and shakes his head. "I _felt_ her fall. Though I had hoped I could get here in time to prevent it. What I want to know is how long have you two been fighting the bond, Anthony? Because her mind...right now it's in literal _shreds_."

Tony rubs the center of his forehead. He's willing to shoulder his fair share of the blame here, but he isn't going to take the blame for her stubbornness or her refusal to talk. "_She_," he emphasizes, "has been acting oddly for over a month. _I_ found out the reason why this morning. At which point we went up to bed."

Malcolm drops his hand and gawks at him. "Without proper _preparation? _What on earth were you thinking?! She's an empath in overload!"

"She told me it would help! I had to do something…touching her helped, it seemed the logical course to take…"

Malcolm drops his hand to his side, staring at him shock. "By the light, you have not been _trained_ have you?"

"I graduated from MIT," Tony offers dryly as his headache increases exponentially. "What do you mean, 'trained'?" He shakes his head. "What does that have to do with what's wrong with Pepper?"

Malcolm looks like his head is going to explode. "You have a _gift._..she's the daughter of a mother with one as well, she damn well should have known a whole lot better."

"You're not answering my question…what did we _do_?" He's so frustrated he wants to rip his hair out. He can't fix what he can't first identify.

"You took the path of most resistance, and it bit her in the ass. You I can forgive in your ignorance but her…she knows better, her mother should have taught her the _rules_."

Tony feels his fists clench. "I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. All I know is that up until about eight hours ago when she came in this morning, I thought she was dying. I had to do _something_."

Malcolm sighs again. "When this is over, boy, you and I are going to have to sit down, because it's obvious you have a _lot _of remedial catching up to do..."

Tony screws his eyes shut, because honesty he still doesn't know what the hell is going on or what he believes about anything outside of what he and Pepper share. "Just help her," he says, and all the anguish of the last four hours are contained in the request. Because if this kills her – if he's killed her in ignorance, he doesn't know what he's going to do.

Malcolm reaches out and grabs him by the hand. "I'm going to do my best, but this is going to take both of us. Your link is probably the only way we can even get in." Two seconds later, the bond flares to life in his head again. In the outside of the world he can hear Malcolm speaking, though he can no longer feel the older man's grip on her hand.

The world is strange...ephemeral. Like when he was younger and experimented his one and only time with crystal meth.

With one exception. "Can you see the bond like a thread in your head?" His last trip hadn't involved a literal guide in his head.

"How are you doing this…?"

"Later. I'll in explain in your lessons. Now can you see it? Time is kind of 'of the essence.'"

It takes a moment but then Tony realizes he can...a small a gossamer string. "Yeah, I see it I think…" He reaches out to touch it and it actually thrums like a violin string.

"That's the one advantage of the fact that you're lovers. The ties between you should speed this up considerably once we get inside," Malcolm breathes.

It is the first time in his life that Tony has had ever had a father express _gratitude_ that his daughter is sexually active. He files it away in his brain as another reason today is officially going to the top of the list in his head labeled 'utterly creepy.' "You're going to have to tell me what to do here," Tony says, refocusing on the task at hand. "I'm good with my hands, but I'm not sure that's going to be much help right now."

"You already have the instincts. Follow the thread. Let's hope that even though she's in psychic shock it hasn't effected our entrance in yet." Tony closes his eyes and imagines following the string. Opens them again and finds himself in a dull, grey tinted room.

"What do you see?" Malcolm asks him firmly. "Describe everything and leave out no detail. Nothing is unimportant...and I mean that literally."

Tony looks around him and the view is depressing. Literally. He...moves...to examine more of the room, but any kind of movement is difficult if not downright exhausting. The very air itself seems a light shade of grey and it pours into his lungs like smoke when he breathes leaving his chest tight. He controls the panic that rises with the sensation of being stifled. He's here for Pepper, and he's only been here a few minutes. He doesn't want to consider how long she'd been walling herself up in here. No wonder she looks as if she's just been released from a concentration camp.

He examines his surroundings, trying to pay attention to detail. There's not much to see. Each wall of the room has a door, and each door quietly creaks and groans as if ready to give in to some kind of pressure. One of them has, it seems; it's opened just a few inches, as if someone squeezed through it, and near it the fog is even thicker in the room.

"I'm in some sort of central chamber. Everything's dirty grey. The air itself is thick -almost like some kind of smog. There are doors all around the outside and the doors look like they're barely holding out against whatever trying to push its way in..." The thought of Pepper being here for any length of time makes him nauseous. But she hasn't just been _here_, she's been carrying it around with her.

"One of the doors is open. Just barely. I don't want to open any of the others..."

"Is there writing on them? Any kind of words or identification?" Malcolm's voice is still there...still calm, though the air immediately to the right of him is starting to thin.

Tony can't find any words. Nothing but blank walls. "No...just the doors. And like I said, one of them is open." All of a sudden Malcolm is there. He is physically standing beside him.

He reaches out and slaps his hand against one of the doorways, which trembles in the frame, "Hang on to your hat." The frame actually splinters as the wood comes off its hinges. And just like that the color blue refills the room. He can see Pepper sleeping...can see her drawing a breath. Can feel the calm and the coolness descend like a visceral representation of every moment she's ever looked up at the sky, taken a deep breath and pushed it out again. The details are all varied, but the emotion itself is recognizable. _Peace_.

Beside him Malcolm shivers and his pupils dilate. "Start on the other doors. We got to equalize the pressure…get the colors back where they belong. I don't care what you do; Just get them open. But do so carefully, Tony. Because there's going to be a backlash each time we open a door, and some of them might not be this pleasant."

Then Malcolm steps to the left and starts throwing open each door.

Tony goes to the cracked door on the right. The brush of his fingers against the doorknob is enough to make it swing all the way open. His lungs freeze in his chest as he's overcome by blind despair, terror, and numbing shock. There's a hundred sleepless nights behind this door, uncounted nightmares, the weight of things seen that can't be unseen. They drive him to his knees and he understands, finally, why she ran.

The possibility alone of this door opening would have been debilitating, saying nothing of the _reality_.

Hands grab him by his shoulders and haul him upright. "Anthony, you have to _breathe_!" Malcolm is standing there before him. The older man looks sick himself, but his face is self assured. "You have to remember these are specters and memories. It shouldn't be this bad...and when I'm done with her it won't ever be this way again."

Tony just shakes her head. "How can I make her face this? Why would I make the woman I love confront any of this?" The idea of the pain she's been living with is enough to make him almost physically sick

"Because it's who she _is_. It never had anything to do with you. Well okay, yes it does, but only in the sense you can make her stronger. That's why pair bonds as strong as this one _exist_, Anthony. Because when they're properly balanced you can _lift _each other's burdens." Then before Tony can protest, Malcolm is hauling him bodily across the room. Tony hadn't realized it yet, but while he'd been reeling, Malcolm had already released all but one of the other doors. "This one's _yours_," Malcolm tells him firmly. "Because there are some things that I don't need to know."

And then before he can blink, Malcolm's grabbing the handle, pulling open the door and throwing him bodily inside.

The room is hot, humid, scented with nothing he can identify but as a whole he can name. Pepper. It's her perfume, her skin, that special scent of aroused woman that Tony's experienced exactly once but would now know anywhere. In this room he feels strong, his body slightly on edge. He breathes deep and examines the room with a predatory eye.

He's never been aroused just by an essence before, but his erection is hard to miss.

His eyes begin to catalogue, and he finds he's not that surprised. There are books; floor to ceiling books, bound in leather and edged in gilt. Scattered on the shelves is music in all its representations - sheet music, instruments, records, CDs. The wood of the shelves is a rich red, and the floor is strewn with lush Persian carpets. A fire crackles in a fireplace of red brick. Miniature replicas of classic Baroque sculptures are scattered over surfaces without regard, each one a private drama ready to be viewed. One corner of the room holds an antique bed with rumpled covers and hanging drapes that hide whoever is in it from view. The paintings are small but richly textured. He could look at them for hours.

This room is a delight for the physical senses, rich and lush and elaborate. Detail is everywhere without being overwhelming. And in the middle of all of this, a laptop glows on the table.

Tony is amused to realize that Pepper really is as passionate about her work as she's always seemed.

The only thing he can't find in this room is Pepper, though there's a red silk dress draped across the arm of an arm chair, accompanied by a pair of dangerously high heels. He smirks, briefly rubs the fabric between his fingers before once again he gets distracted by the bed. Moving towards it feels as natural as breathing in this place.

He expects to find Pepper when he reveals the mattress. He's surprised to find himself looking down at himself instead. He's asleep, probably naked if the bare chest is any indication. That's nothing compared to the shock of seeing his arc reactor here in this place. Her passion has turned its light red, and it pulses as if it is actually connected to his heart.

He wonder if she even realizes how much importance she's placed on it. The pillow next to his representation's head is dented. If Pepper had resided here, she's left. And it's hardly surprising considering what has just happened.

They will visit this room again, he knows. But for now it is time to leave.

He slips out of the room without regret and makes sure the door is firmly shut. Because while this has its place, it's not the end all or be all of who they are. And he's content for it to remain closed until Pepper is better equipped to handle it. For now he's knows that a part of him is already inside, and in the end that's enough.

When he emerges, the room is no longer grey. Some red has crept in with all the other colors, and bled together like some kind of fantastic tapestry. Malcolm is standing in the center of the room, and when Tony nods to him the other man smiles nervously. "Where is Pepper?" he asks, as the room starts to shake.

To his shock and horror the walls and floor begin to crack, "What the hell is going on?" Tony asks in alarm.

Malcolm grabs his shoulders. "Concentrate on the outside world, Anthony. We're standing in manifested _numbness_, and it's just about to shatter."

"I can't leave Pepper here!" he shouts right back, but Malcolm shakes him hard in retribution.

"This is _her_ mind, Tony...she'll simply remake the rubble. We came here to shatter the guise and that's what we managed to do. I can't protect us from her fallout. We have to get out and let her mind put itself back to right."

Tony's going to argue again, but before he can he hears the faint sound of a heeled footstep behind him and a small hand lands square in the middle of his back...and before he can turn around he's _shoved_ out. "I will be right behind you."

Every muscle in his body hurts as Tony jerks, wobbles, and fights to stay standing. His bedroom looks strange. Cluttered and too bright and the dimensions feel odd at first. "Pepper?" He moans the words very softly. And his eyes turn to the woman on the bed.

She's glaring at him, and he can feel her exhausted disapproval. He just shrugs and tenderly cups her cheek. He'd done what he had to. And she's had his back when he didn't understand the danger. He wonders if she's even aware of what a perfect example of their dynamic that is. "Get some sleep, Pep." He thinks she might already be out as he kisses her forehead. Still, he lingers there, soaking in the heat of her body, the scent and feel of her skin, the sound of her deep breathing. She is _asleep_, not separated from him in some way.

Behind him Malcolm sighs, and he turns to see him. The other man is slumped against his bedroom wall and he's pale as a ghost. The aura of authority - of outright power, that has dominated him since he spoke to him back at the gate has all disappeared. Malcolm Keith-Bahyr doesn't look intimidating anymore. He looks old and nearly ready to puke.

"I need a drink," the older man tells him when he speaks. "Whiskey preferably, and from a _really_ good year."

Tony considers, decides he wants to let Pepper rest in the quiet. "Jarvis, shades. And alert me when she wakes up." Tony takes the other man by the arm and carefully guides him out of the room. Five minutes later they're both seated and holding a tumbler of whiskey, though Tony has no real desire for a drink. What he wants now is answers.

"You said you're Pepper's father." He starts the conversation, and is rewarded when he sees the other man wince.

"Yes...well to be truthful she doesn't actually _know_ that. She calls me Malcolm, and as far as she knows, I'm just the most tolerant of what used to be her mother's friends."

"Do you ever intend to tell her?" Tony's voice is carefully without censure of any kind. Because this really isn't any of his business. He doesn't know if Pepper even wants to be given this new knowledge. But if Malcolm thinks for an instant that Pepper isn't going to know that something is up the moment she takes a look at Tony...

"I wanted to tell her years ago. He mother disagreed. She wanted Virginia to find her own way without the pressure of knowing her heritage. And I was young and stupid enough to agree. Under current circumstances though, I can't afford to let that pledge can't hold me any longer."

"How did you know she was in trouble? And how long have you known it?" Tony suppresses relief as he asks the next question. He's always been a terrible liar. It's the reason he tends toward the truth, even if it is likely to get him slapped.

Malcolm shrugs, "I've had a funny itch in the back of my head for almost three months. I didn't know what was causing it until about three weeks ago. Her gift wasn't _anywhere _near this active the last time I saw her, or I might have guessed."

"Yeah well, there was a lot going on three months ago," Tony says with a tight smile. From his returning from Afghanistan, to their dance and almost kiss, to the battle with Obadiah…well there's more than enough reasons that Pepper would be overwhelmed enough to make someone...'itch.'

"Did you become lovers then? Or did she use her higher level ability? Though to be frank, until she wakes up and talks to me, I'm not even sure if I can tell you what that actually is." Malcolm shrugs and takes a shot of whiskey, then looks back at the bedroom. "Hell, with her empathy this off the chart even skin contact could have probably done the trick."

"Her fingers brushed mine while we were working in the shop." Tony takes a sip of his drink, then knocks it all back. "She was handing me a screwdriver. There was something…I don't know the specifics. The lovers thing is a bit more...recent."

Malcolm rolls his eyes. "Let me guess...recent as in about six to eight hours ago?" Tony grunts an affirmative then pours himself another drink. Malcolm looks sympathetic. "For the record it's not your fault." He takes another sip of his drink, throws it back. "You really are new to this 'gift' thing. Virginia never told you what she is?"

"She kissed me this morning, then tried to run. I finally got the whole story after I physically stopped her retreat from the basement – I refused to let her resign. She's terrified, Bahyr...she was practically hyperventilating just building up the courage to kiss me. I don't know why she thought she had to hide it, but she's so up and down lately I have pretty much had to make each new move in direct opposition to her own. I thought that listening to her would help. I never imagined she's end up self-combusting like this."

Malcolm looks at him seriously. "Yes well, I owe you an apology. It wasn't finalizing the bond that did this. I was in there and I saw the damage myself, and this is something that's been building for weeks. If this thing had happened the way that's preferred, all I'd have to do is give you orders to get naked and stay that way for at least 72 hours. Now though, it's not as simple as sex. Somebody has to teach you how to manage what you just dove head first into. You need some serious remedial education."

"Hmm... Pepper uses that exact same tone when she thinks I've done something idiotic." He sighs and rolls his head on his neck before looking at Malcolm again. "I did what I had to in order to keep her whole, and I am not going to apologize for it."

"I'm not going to ask you to. You leapt without looking...which I suspect is a byproduct of your gift. And you're right there was really no other option, but you'll be sitting on the sidelines on the day I lay into Virginia _why_ that is the case."

For some reason Tony finds that annoying, "Would you please _stop_ calling her that?"

"Stop calling her _what_?" Malcolm asks in amusement.

"She's _not_ Virginia. To me, she's always been _Pepper_. I've never called her anything else since the day she stormed into my office and I hired her to work for me." Though he has to wonder now, because they'd had a nearly perfect working relationship right from the start. When she'd stormed into his office, threatening to use pepper spray she didn't have on a pair of guys from security who'd really been too intimidated to touch her anyway, he'd...

"How soon can these bonds form?" he asks.

"Potential bonds can form almost immediately. You're telling me you _renamed_ her?" Malcolm snorts. "This is downright _funny_."

"She hated it. It wasn't supposed to stick." That didn't change the fact it did. "Why does it matter? What is it that you are trying to say?"

"Names _mean_ something, Anthony, to the gifted in particular." Malcolm shrugs. "And the most important ones I've had have been given to me by other people of power." The man sets down his glass and crosses his arms. "If you two met, clicked and you _named _her, you could have sparked off her gifts. I'd noticed...the two or three times I saw her since, that she was getting strong. I never considered she'd come in contact with a freaking catalyst."

"You're saying that the last five weeks are my fault?" The words are a harsh whisper.

"Your fault, no. You didn't understand what was happening. It was just an incredibly ironic course of very good or bad luck..." Malcolm actually laughs then. "I mean do you have any idea what the _odds _are of this happening unintentionally?" He shakes his head. "I don't even know if they can be calculated."

"If I had the data I'm sure I could give figure them out. I've always been damn good with numbers" Tony relaxes a little bit. "Well, I'm glad I listened to whatever impulsiveness told me to hire her. I don't know what I would have done without her all these years."

He's tired and he wants to go check on Pepper. But he's also still very concerned for her and needs more information. "What exactly happened this afternoon?"

"The best word I can come up is empathic backlash. She's spent months repressing all kinds of trauma. You saw the rooms when we were in there right...? Do I need to explain the metaphor?"

Of course Malcolm didn't. "She's been locking up anything she either can't cope with or doesn't want to cope with." Tony turns his head and shares a mirthless smile with the older man. "It's not often I have a woman leave my bed in tears. If she'd just needed space, I would have tried to give it to her. But she was talking about finding a way to _break_ whatever's between us. And I..." He grimaces. "I wasn't exactly gentle with my opinion against that."

"My guess is the break actually happened before she climbed out. She was just under too much strain and what you two did shattered right through her walls."

"She's the most important thing in my world, Bayhr. And she's spent the last five weeks looking like she's being consumed by cancer, and I _let_ her get away with it. I knew something was wrong, and I knew I needed to do something, but ultimately I decided that as her boss it wasn't my place."

"Why?" Malcolm asks the question simply, but with a intensity Tony can't deny. And for a moment, Tony's not sure he could lie to him, even if he wants to.

"Because if she had been dying, and she had told me, then it would be real. And if she wasn't seeking treatment it'd mean that there was none to be offered. And that all would have equal only one possibility – that I was going to lose her."

"And you couldn't live with that." Malcolm finishes and it's not even remotely a question.

"I wouldn't be alive if not for her," Tony answers, thinking of the two times he _knows_ she saved him - when she'd replaced his generator and kept the old one, and when she'd blown the main arc reactor - and the two times he _suspects_ that she's saved him because he'd heard her voice. He remembers the pain, the panic of hearing her say she was quitting because she couldn't stay and watch him kill himself.

"Then you've been in love with each other for months." Malcolm shook his head. "And subconsciously fighting the connection on both of your parts. " Malcolm shakes his head, and whistles softly. "Well you two are either the most mentally resilient people I've ever met, or the both of you are already _insane_."

"I never claimed my brain worked right. It's downright freakish, in fact. Not that I mind. Never would have needed Pepper if it wasn't."

Malcolm laughs. "All I can say right now is sometimes the blind really can lead the blind. Though I guarantee I won't let either of you stay that way for long."

Tony opens his mouth to say something, but the spike of pain that bursts in his temple drives most rational thought out of his mind. He actually gasps and touches his head to check for blood before he realizes that no one has actually brained him. "Pepper." He staggers out of his chair and shakes his head, trying to clear the pain out. It doesn't work. The only thing that happens is that he clears enough space to realize he needs to be able to think if he's going to help her.

He's completely oblivious to his guest as he jogs unsteadily down the hallway to his bedroom.

Somehow the distance melts away and he's sitting on the edge of the bed, his hands cradling her head as he tries to calm her down. She's panicked, hyperventilating. "Hush, Pepper. Hush. Shh... It's alright. It's going to be alright." Her nails hurt as they dig into his arms, but when her eyes met his he is lost. She's drowning and he can't bear to watch her struggle. As he had in the basement he relies on touch to tether her to him; he pulls her into his lap and curls around her, rocking them both slowly.

He brings a hand up to push the bangs up and off of her face, and when his flesh meets hers the reaction is a little startling. Warmth flows, like some kind of opening circuit, from his skin into her own. Pepper sighs and relaxes, and the pain starts to dim in his head.

He leans back so that she's sprawled over his chest with her face tucked into his neck. His hands slip just under her shirt so that they're resting on the bare skin of her back. There is something about having her in his arms even now that is soothing and fulfilling. After a few minutes she stirs and slips one hand under _his_ shirt. The feeling of her small hand resting against his side further lulls him into a sense of security. He wonders how long he can lay here and find contentment in just feeling her breathe.

He begins to realize his long nights of working are probably at an end for the most part. At least the ones where he ends up tinkering for lack of anything better to do.

"How long have I been sleeping?" Pepper asks after several quiet minutes. He isn't aware she's actually awake until she shifts and her breathing changes against his neck.

"Less than an hour," he tells her softly, and she chews her lip in confusion.

"Tony, how did...why are we...the last thing I remember is realizing I was about to pass out..." Her eyes are wide, and her arms grip his convulsively. He can sense that she's searching her memory and she's drawing a blank.

Is this typical of the kind of empathic collapse she's just experienced? He really doesn't know.

"You passed out," he informs her gently. "Apparently because you've done more than exhaust your body these last weeks." There's disapproval in his voice, as well as an obvious warning of eventual tough conversations.

"We completed the bond," she murmurs, and he honestly can't say from her tone whether she considers it a blessing or a curse. Irregardless her hands clutches tightly to his chest, like she's afraid to let him go

"I hate to disagree with you, Pepper, but there's a man downstairs with a different opinion."

She looks at him with eyes that are completely baffled. "Tony, what in heck are you...?" the words die off in a moment. Then she groans and buries her face in his neck. "Oh God, please tell me it's not Malcolm."

"It's not Malcolm," he obediently says, but he holds her closer. "Pepper, he said he _felt _you collapse." His lips find her forehead and press a trembling kiss into her skin. "Pepper, if he hadn't come, I don't know what would have happened."

Pepper only shakes. "I am in _so much_ trouble." There's the slightest bit of hysteria in her voice now.

"Probably," he agrees and he holds her tighter. He doesn't tell her what those four hours were like for him, feeling her slipping away. He doesn't want to make her feel any worse than she already does.

"I'm SORRY," she says after a moment. And there are tears running down his skin. "I'm sorry...I'm so, SO sorry that I got you into this."

"Pepper..." Tony can't keep himself from turning them so that he can prop himself up over her. His lips are gentle as he slowly kisses her tears away. "Pepper, you didn't get me into anything I didn't volunteer for."

"Like hell," she murmurs after a moment. "Should have run the moment you got off the damn plane. I saw the reactor and I _knew_. I should have turned in my resignation and gone home immediately that day."

"And what do you think I would have done then, Pepper? What do you honestly think I would have done with my life? If you had left me when I needed you most?" There's nothing she can say to that, and both of them know it. It doesn't stop the frantic beat of her heart against his chest.

"I can't...I can't seem to _leave_." She makes it sound like a failure on her part. Like she long ago came to terms with the idea that it is the only way she can actually love him.

Tony sighs. "Pepper, you're ripping my heart out here. Every time you so much as think of leaving, I swear I feel it."

"This isn't going to work, Tony. It can't possibly _work_..." She says the words like they're some kind of mantra she can beat into both of them.

"Pepper, I excel at making things that shouldn't work, work. Will you please just _trust_ me?"

"I want to, Tony, oh God I want to... but how does a fish live when out of the water? We're just so _different_...I am running out of breath." She was running out of air, running out of chances. Running on empty after weeks of shoving it all inside.

"How many different ways are you going to make me say it, Pepper? _Stop running_. You're run yourself ragged physically and emotionally. It's no wonder you have no reserves left to deal with _anything_. Will you please just give yourself the chance to _rest_? Has it even occurred to you that you can't deal with this, with _us_, because you've squandered your energy in ways that haven't benefited you at all? Just slow down. Breathe. Eat something. Sleep. _Stop running_."

"I am trying to protect you!" The words slip out on a wail. "Because it's all falling apart, and that's what I _do_...I hold the pieces together."

"Well stop it! You're _killing_ yourself, Pepper. And you're doing it purposelessly. We _aren't_ falling apart! We're rebuilding the damn engine that drives us!" He's so frustrated with her blind ignorance. "Yes, there are parts and pieces all over the floor, and maybe some of them are going to be discarded or replaced. But I know where they all need to go at the end of the day. If the engine _isn't_ rebuilt, it's going to shake itself to pieces and then we really will be in trouble. So stop holding together something that needs to be taken apart in order to make it work!" She stares at him in utter bewilderment, but he can't seem to stop talking. "Not everything _should_ be saved, Pepper. Did you ever consider that? Some things rot from the inside out. You can't anchor yourself to a foundations that's cracking."

He groans and he rests his head on her chest where he can listen to her heartbeat. "Will you stop being so fucking _strong_ and let me do my job?" he whispers. "Is that really so impossible for you to do?"

"I don't want to lose you, Tony. Your friendship is the only meaningful thing that I have."

"_I'm not your friend_!" He bellows. "I have _never_ been your friend!"

She flinches and he wants to get up and hammer his head against a wall. "Pepper," he says tightly. "You can have my friendship if you really want it, that's not an issue. But the price of it is accepting the rest of me along with it. And I mean the whole of me. All of it. Everything. You _own me_, Pepper. So stop treating me with contempt."

She looks up at him like she's never seen him before. "How on earth can you even _say _that? I've lived in hell for _weeks_ trying to keep you from getting caught up in this. Everything I have done has been about preserving your liberty..."

He wonders as she says the words, what she thinks it is that has her captive. What's caused this level of terror over the basic truth of what, and maybe who, they really are.

"I don't want liberty, Pepper. I don't _want_ it. What do I have to do to make you understand that? Am I going to have to let you leave before you realize it?" Just the thought is enough to make his heart being irregularly. "Or are you so tightly bound yourself that you can't recognize the man who's trying to offer you a love knot?"

"You don't understand," she whimpers after a moment. "Ironman...this freefall life, your entire fucking insanity as a religion - you got to _choose_ it. I never wanted to fly." She pounds his chest, with more anger than he'd imagined possible. More anger than he's seen her display in her whole life. "I'm falling, Tony, do you get that? I'm falling and I don't have a fucking suit to save me!"

_"I do!"_ he yells back. "But I can't catch you if you won't let me!"

Pepper gasps and jerks, and he wonders how many circuits she's blown, because she is eviscerating him and she doesn't even seem to notice. His arms and legs are shaky as he climbs off the bed. "Pepper, I can't help you if you won't let me." He stumbles a little as he backs away from her, fighting his own body's need to hold her as tightly as possible to ward off the threat it feels.

But the threat is inside of her. And holding her hasn't done him much good. How long will she had to be on her own before she realizes that the faster she runs, the harder she'll crash them both into the wall?

"Virginia!" Comes a voice from the doorway. "By all that's right, child, you will let me in!" And then Malcolm is pushing into the room with his hands over his eyes. Tony pushes past him, though he doesn't make it much more than a few steps down the hallway before he sinks down against the wall and folds into himself. He hasn't felt this much like shit since he woke up in that cave.

And then Malcolm has Pepper in the hallway beside him, and he's got her right palm pressed full bore against the skin of his chest. "You will be _quiet_, Virginia," the man intones, in that same tone Tony first heard on the videophone. "And for the first time in months, you will _listen_."

Pepper whimpers a little, but her eyes are on Malcolm's face, and the man holds her gaze with an intensity that's frightening. "You _cannot_ prevent this...there was _never a choice_.

You are gifted, and so is he. The collapse of your old world was necessary, it is what had to be. Because you are more than this...you are meant to be more than this. You are out of balance. Do you understand me?"

And Pepper weeps. Without a sound Pepper weeps.

"Stop," Tony says, unsure of who he's speaking to. But the sound of his voice wrenches Pepper's attention back to him. He wraps his hand around his wrist with the intention of pulling it away...but he can't. He can't break that last tie between them. "Pepper. Choose for us. If you really want to go. But you have to choose _now_." Because he won't have the ability to offer this a second time.

She looks over at him stunned, unable at this point to form words. But he doesn't miss the way she unconsciously tightens her grasp on his hand.

He tries again. "Pepper, you have to stop running or you have to leave now. And you won't be able to come back. If we even survive it, I won't be able to let you go again." And then he forces himself to put space between them though it leaves them both trembling and weak. "See how far you can get, if you have to go. But for god's sake make a choice."

There's a moan, and then the bond shrieks. Light pours into his head like desperation and molten fire. The woman on the floor answers by crawling, not toward the door, but back into his lap, where she then tries to crawl into his body. He groans and clings to her, pressing so close that her bones poke into him in uncomfortable places. He doesn't even notice as he blindly finds her lips and kisses her like she's the only thing keeping him alive. And despite the technology in his chest and the air in his lungs, he suspects she is.

Pepper kisses him with the same kind of intensity, and through it all, she simply cries.

He might be crying as well, because he thinks his cheeks are wet.

It takes ten minutes, for the onslaught to stop. And through it all Malcolm remains strangely quiet. He's leaning up again one of the walls in the adjacent upstairs bathroom, Tony can see the way the light casts his shadow out and into the hall.

"Is she asleep?" Malcolm asks after a moment.

Pepper snorts. "I've not asleep, and no, I'm also not currently in need of it, 'Dad.'"

Tony laughs weakly even though his head is spinning and the inside of his chest still feels like hell. "I could have called that," he comments. In fact, I should have when I thought it."

"I am not an _imbecile,_" Pepper mutters, almost sounding insulted. "And Mom wasn't able to keep a secret from me decently since the year I turn eleven. Besides," she mutters under her breath, "He's the only other empath we regularly hung out with."

Tony just nods in reply and rests his head back against the wall. "Whatever you say, Ms. Potts."

Pepper stares up at him, eyes assessing him critically. "You're tired and you're hungry. You're getting something to eat." She pushes herself up off the floor then, and reaches down a hand as if she intends to tug him to his feet. The switch is lightening fast an headspinningly dramatic. But there's no doubt who's standing before him. She needs a good meal herself, a bath and a couple days of nothing but sleep.

But Pepper Potts is in the house, and she's fully back in business.

"This isn't more of your 'Take care of Tony for his own good' crap, is it?" he asks suspiciously as he lets her help him off the floor.

"You can worry about it while you're eating," she informs him baldly. "Because I'm starving and after I eat I intend to crawl back in bed. So unless you want to fight over the pillows I suggest you get moving. Because I am not waiting for you to take first pick of the leftovers if I get downstairs first."

He just looks at her, computes her change of behavior and manner, their circumstances. Raises an eyebrow. "If I'd known all I needed to do was swoon to get you to start thinking again..."

"Bite me, Stark," she informs him calmly. And then she starts down the stairs.

"No really," he says as he follows her on legs that aren't nearly as strong as they'd been coming up the stairs. "I vote we take turns wearing the armor. I could get used to being a damsel in distress. Or is it dude in distress? Either way, I bet I could get a lot of work done in a tower retreat before it was time to swap places."

Behind them Malcolm was laughing, clear bright and loud. "Not the end for certain, but at least a real beginning..."

"Good-bye, Dad!" Pepper sing-songs. "They have very nice rooms at the Hilton. Tony and I will expect you for an early dinner tomorrow around two."

"Two?" Tony asks doubtfully. "How about a reasonable dinner at six?"

"Believe me you'll be ready to take a break and have a lesson at two."

"I don't know why anyone's assuming I'll even be awake at two." Tony yawns, as if to illustrate his point, and his jaw pops loudly. "Ow."

"Goodbye, Dad." Pepper sing-songs again. "It was wondrous to 'see' you..." Tony she doesn't even acknowledge, which could be taken as either a warning or a challenge

"Six," Tony tells the other man firmly. "We'll see about lessons after that."

Malcolm continues to chuckle, and when he reaches out a hand to Tony, his long auburn ponytail swings. "How about you just call me when you're ready for me to come over. I have jetlag anyway."

"That sounds even better." Tony is completely serious about passing out for at least 14 hours. Today has been one shock after another. The experience of defragging Pepper's mind alone had left him running on fumes, and then there'd been that fight. It feels as if he'd physically wrestling with her instead of just verbally. He wonders if _anything_ is just verbal between them anymore.

"I'm eating your steak," Pepper informs him from below. "And for the record, you were warned, and I am not in the slightest bit sorry."

Tony just smiles, content. She needs it more than he does. "What's mine is yours, Pepper. You know that."

-Sappy, Stark- rings out her voice inside his head. -You're really sappy-

He doesn't even have the capacity to be shocked by that. He'll find time to be surprised tomorrow.

Tony sees their guest out and then wanders into the kitchen. Pepper is eating, and then he remembers that the last time he saw her eating was the day before yesterday when it'd been one of her 'good days'. And he wonders how long he's going to be watching her, wondering if a bad day is just waiting to come along and rock their weak foundations.

He doesn't believe for an instant that she wasn't somehow forced into accepting the truth. Even though he's tried to give her control by putting the option in her hands, he's still worried that she might feel trapped. This truce is only momentary. And a part of him warns that once she's regained her strength she might really try to fight this…

Across the room from him Pepper groans. "You are brooding and giving me a _headache_. Cut it _out _and _eat your stupid lunch_."

"Yes -" He thinks better of saying 'dear.' He's so burned out he can't read her mood. "Yes, Pepper."

She finishes her last bite of steak and drops her plate in the sink. "I am going up to bed. Don't be long." Then she almost absentmindedly kisses his forehead before she turns to climb the stairs

And he absolutely melts. Which is odd, because he's pretty sure that he'd never _be_ that kind of guy. The doting one, the adoring one. But with Pepper there was no debate whether he could be that guy. He just is. He eats something - he's not sure what - and then he goes back upstairs. Hopefully he's met whatever kind of time limit she set on his return. Hopefully she won't send him back downstairs for more. But there's no protest when he enters their bedroom. She's already in bed and Tony watches her for a few minutes before turning towards the bathroom. He'd been covered in grease this morning, and things haven't improved since then. He wants a shower before he crawls into bed with her.

When he comes out clean she seems to be asleep. Or rather she does until he climbs in beside her. "You're wearing pajamas." she bitches at him lightly, and he realizes she's got nothing but one of his clean t-shirts on under the sheet. She waits until he settles into a comfortable position, and then scoots in to curl up as close as she can to the line of his body.

"Yeah, well, the pants are yours as surely as the steak was," he says through a yawn. "But if you think I want anything other than to fall asleep with you in my arms, you're vastly overestimating my stamina."

She snorts a little and wraps on arm around him, fingers going to lie just slightly below his belly. "Go to _sleep,_ Stark," she orders, and then she passes out herself.


	5. Chapter 6

Pepper wakes to sun on her face, and a strange sort of eerie feeling in her stomach

Pepper wakes to sun on her face, and a strange sort of eerie feeling in her stomach. It takes her several long moments of lying completely still to ascertain what her subconscious has been telling her all along: she is not in her own bed. Where she actually is, she finds less surprising; she's lain between these sheets before, on at least two other occasions.

Of course the firs time that she did so, the room was dark, and the space had felt empty. The man who now lays sleeping beside her had been in a cave on the other side of the globe. There couldn't be a more dramatic contrast between that time and this, though. Because at present Tony is asleep, and his face peaceful for once. The energy that usually surrounds him in waking hours is absent, but it doesn't diminish him. His head rests on the edge of her pillow as if uncertain of its right to be there. His beard is coming in, casting a shadow across his jaw.

He's all gleaming skin in the sunlight and his body is relaxed. The only thing that hints at the difficulties of the day before is the purplish circles under his eyes.

He is breathing and he is sleeping and his hand is laying on her hip. She shifts away from the touch just a little and watches his feature fall into a frown. He hasn't been getting enough sleep. And she knows by more than just his posture. There's a low kind of humming in the back of her head that is actually spitting out regular information about how he's doing, if she lets herself look at it.

It may have always been there in fact, though thinking about that now is going to cause a panic she'd very much like to avoid.

'Easy, _easy_' Something in her subconscious whispers. Tony Stark is fine at present and so is she. There is no need to wake him up when he was in need of more rest. Especially after what she put him through last night. She knows...she _knows_ that the last few days she's been over-reacting. Her psyche feels almost raw with the sheer amount of abuse that it's endured.

She recalls half the things that she's said to him and she just wants to wither with the shame.

She'd made so many accusations, created so many unnecessary fears. They're going to be mopping up the results of what she said to him for the next several decades. As if Tony Stark didn't already have abandonment issues, she's just managed to bring separation anxiety back up to a whole new level for him. In her head a stinging sensation starts to throb, and she sighs in acknowledgment. It is time to get out of the bed and find a quiet place to put herself back together.

She needs her distance. And some space away from him.

'A little food, a little meditation.' She needed to shower, eat and change. Not to mention she needed to take a crack at re-erecting the shields that she now felt clear minded enough to try and get back up around their bond again. She also needs to get out of the room before the low level desire to reach out and stroke Tony's face morphs into something strong and more demanding...

She wonders how long it's going to take before they pass the stage where just watching him _breathe_ is enough to leave her half aroused and _wanting_.

Tony shifts as she leaves the bed, moving restlessly for a moment. But then he pulls her pillow close and buries his face in it. Then he appears to go back to sleep. She takes the blanket and covers him lightly before she heads down the stairs. The lower level is quiet. The fountains that normally run all day have apparently been turned off by the ever watchful Jarvis. "Jarvis, half light please. And please cue up some Chopin for me."

The AI follows the instructions without further comment, and a moment later she's in the kitchen putting the kettle on to boil. Her stomach rumbles as she passes the fruit bowl on the counter, and after a moment's consideration she snags herself a slightly overripe peach.

The fruit is tangy and just a little bit cloying, the juice runs down and over her fingers when she takes the first bite, and she sighs in genuine ecstasy. One thing is for certain, thanks to the bond _all_ of her 'appetites' seem to be returning. It was nice to be hungry again.

'Okay, Jarvis - Status check. I need an update on our stats both at the office and here at the mansion. I need to get into voicemail, and then I'll get to work on the backlog of email." After that, she plans to turn on the news and find out if there's anything pertinent happening.

It's going to be good to get back down to the mind numbing routine of running a business again. She goes to retrieve her computer from her office, but is stopped by her locked office door. Which is strange, all things considered, because if she'd been asked, she wouldn't have been able to say whether the door had a lock or not. There was really no point in it. This was Tony's _house_.

"Ah, Jarvis….there seem to be a security glitch here, can you open my office door for me?"

"I'm afraid not, Ms. Potts. Mr. Stark left strict orders with me that this door remain locked for the 48 hours following your initial entrance to the house yesterday morning."

She blinks a little. Then remembers him telling her as much. "I take it he never changed that stipulation before he came up to bed?" A part of her wants to be annoyed, but the majority of her is bemused. It is, after all such a 'Tony' way of dealing with what he perceives as a 'problem'.

Jarvis manages to sound a little apologetic. "I'm sorry, but no...his instructions were explicit and not renegotiable. If you wish to get in you can go upstairs and ask him...he may have a secondary pass code for the lockout algorithm that he used."

Pepper shakes her head. "He needs his sleep." Besides, she admits a little whimsically, there is more than one form of private meditation. And if he's locked her out of her office and confiscated her Blackberry, that just leaves one option for that she is sure he doesn't know she's capable of yet.

"Jarvis, when did we last order groceries?" She hopes it wasn't that long ago. Because she's got a hankering for quiche…or maybe something with bacon.

She shrugs and goes to inspect the condition of his pantry.

Normally when Tony wakes up, all he has to do is open his eyes and he's _awake_, his brain is usually already leaping forward to whatever interests him the most at the given moment. This morning, he has to fight to gain any sort of technical consciousness at all. He's still wiped out from everything that he knows happened yesterday. The last time he'd felt this way, he'd woken up at the army base in Germany after Rhodey had gotten him out of the desert. Three months of stress, fear, and anger had taken their toll and left him unable to focus on much of anything.

Now he's essentially facing the same thing while also being uncertain if anything that happened the day before had actually occurred. It was all just so outside the world he'd been living in until yesterday morning...

No...it happened. He's convinced of that as he feels something inside of him reaching for something that's not there. The empty bed isn't a surprise to him when he opens his eyes.

"Jarvis, locate Pepper." He's not desperate. His skin isn't crawling as it'd begun to when he'd offered her the choice to leave him. She must be somewhere nearby.

"Ms. Potts is in the kitchen preparing breakfast. I'd suggest that you join her. By my estimation it's been nearly twelve hours since you last moved or ate..."

Only twelve? Damn, he'd been shooting for at least 14. And the way his body feels as he drags himself out of bed only confirms that. If he didn't know better, he'd say he'd gone out in the suit the night before and found a good fight. The kind with lots of explosions.

If fighting with Pepper is the equivalent of being shot at close range by RPGs, he never wants to do it again. At least, not without a damn good reason.

Tony considers putting on something more than the loose cotton pajama pants he's wearing, but decides against it. Her presence really hasn't stopped him from wandering around half naked before. It certainly shouldn't make him stop now. They are both going to have to figure out how to fit together in this strange new relationship, but he intends to follow good advice and continue only in the same way he begins.

Pepper and he are lovers now, and he's not remotely ashamed of it. Naked or almost naked is more comfortable, not to mention it provides easier access to the now joint comfort that comes with touching bare skin.

And he's not completely oblivious to the thin but obvious thread of hunger that is coming at him down from her end of the bond.

Descending the stairs hurts, like he's lost all elasticity in his muscles while he slept, along with the cartilage cushioning his joints. He feels _old _and he doesn't appreciate the preview. He goes straight to the kitchen, and momentarily stops short. Pepper is not eating, she is _cooking_. And not just cooking to feed herself, but apparently cooking for the pleasure of it. The smells in the kitchen are _amazing_.

He's not sure why anyone would make caramel rolls from scratch unless they found it soothing. He takes another deep breathe and grins, not that he's going to _complain_.

However, food is not at the top of his agenda right now. The _only_ thing even on his agenda at the moment is the woman concentrating on the bowl in front of her so fully that she doesn't notice his approach. She's dressed in one of his shirts, the sleeves forming thick cuffs around her elbows because she's had to roll them back. The only other thing he can see on her is a pair of his socks, and the way they're puddled around her ankles is endearing.

There's also a small geometric tattoo on her left thigh he somehow missed yesterday.

"I want to wake up to find you like this every morning," he tells her as he wraps his arms around her from behind and rests his head on her shoulder. Even this innocent contact makes him start to feel better. The warmth that flows between them relaxes his sore muscles and helps clear his mind.

Pepper startles when he embraces her without prior warning, and then she inhales a little tremulously, though she doesn't pull away. "Yeah well, good luck with that during the workweek. I tend to have a massive bake day sometime during the weekend and then I live off the leftovers for the rest of the week."

She turns around to face him then, running a hand up his arm and onto his shoulder. "Sit down, Tony, and have some breakfast and some Tylenol. You'll feel a lot less like shit if you take some painkillers and have something to eat."

He curses unintelligibly against her shoulder, then sighs deeply and lets her to go as he turns away to get the Tylenol she suggested. "Can I ask you why I feel like I got thrown through a bus - again - or should I save that question for Malcolm?"

Pepper shrugs a little. "I can make a guess, but I guarantee that whatever Malcolm could come up with will sound a whole lot more official. After all he's spent the past twenty years sort of doing this thing professionally. I've just the novice who's slowly feeling out my way as I go."

"Feeling your way? I like the sound of that," Tony teases as he pours himself a cup of coffee. "Forget the minor aches and pains, I want to hear more about that." He waggles his eyebrows and take a long unrepentant moment to recall the smooth, sloping line of her back.

She turns to him and raises an eyebrow in an expression that would have made Fabio himself feel a little unsure. But her lips also quirk just a little. "My...somebody's mind is in the gutter today. Do you want orange juice or milk?"

"If it's a day ending in 'Y'...Milk I think. I haven't had any milk products the last two days."

Tony sits down at the table and watches her as she moves around the kitchen. He likes how she seems to belong here. Though that isn't any more unusual than the comment he just made.

She's _always_ belonged here. It's just that now he feels like he has a right to acknowledge it.

Pepper opens the oven, producing a pan that smells of potatoes, eggs and ham. "Start with something healthy and I might...I repeat _might_ give you a couple of sweet rolls."

He eyes the shirt tails that stop a little high on her thigh. "Keep the sweet rolls. I've got another set of buns on my mind at present."

This time she simply rolls her eyes as she glances back over her shoulder. "In your dreams, Stark. I'm _busy_ at the moment. So just be a good boy and eat." Then she sets the dish with a plate on the table, and goes back over to a large pot that's sitting on the stove.

She bends down to pick up a small crust of something or another that's on the ground along the way.

Any question he had about whether she is wearing _anything_ under said shirt are neatly answered by a pale flash of skin.

Tony closes his eyes because he's pretty sure he's physically incapable of turning his head away from the sight. The need to take her against the refrigerator or on the island in the middle of the kitchen is strong... And it's not just lust, it's a need for some other kind of consummation. But he's still having trouble gauging her mood, and even if he wasn't he still needs to eat something if he doesn't want to just collapse into a sweaty, satisfied pile afterwards.

When he opens his eyes, she's stirring something on the stove and he's able to turn around and serve himself from the dish she'd left with him. "So what have you been up to?"

"I'm making soup and sandwiches later for lunch. Do you prefer chicken and rice or chicken and noodle?" She's on her tiptoes, unconsciously tightening the muscles on the back of her legs as she bends over deeply to smell whatever is in the pot.

"Noodle," he replies absently as he watches her. She fascinates him, even though he's been watching her for years. But somehow everything she does is new now, and somehow connected to him. Even if what she's doing has nothing to do with him.

"You can stopping staring at my butt anytime now." Her voice is amused and little embarrassed, even though she's still facing the stove. She drops several chicken thighs whole into the pot, then a cutting board filled with various cubed vegetables. "Oh...and unless you want to run completely out of groceries, could I please get access back to my office to have something delivered?"

"You have something against driving to the grocery store?" Tony asks. He figures it's safer than observing that he can't help but stare at her ass since she's facing the wrong way for him to stare at her chest.

Pepper stops for just a moment, and then she shakes her head in exasperation. And then she turns, crosses the room and drops right into his lap, sealing her lips on top of his as she does so. In his surprise Tony is dragged under. It's a struggle to gather the will to end the kiss. "Pepper?" he mumbles against her cheek while his hands find her hips so that she can't get up.

"You think too much," she grumbles just above his lips. She wonders if he's even aware of the subconscious rocking motion being enacted by their lower bodies.

"Yeah, I've heard that before. Pardon me for being cautious though." He's hard, and he's battling his need, but he remains coherent. After what had happened yesterday, he is taking no chances.

She looks at him hard a moment, and then she tilts her head. "Tony, you have two choices at present...let me up so we can talk now, or don't and plan on talking to me _after_. Because _you're_ the one who told me there'd be consequences for me avoiding the need to touch you, and it's kind of hard to focus with you unintentionally aiming the equivalent of empathic porn into my head."

He trembles and pulls her closer. For a long moment he struggles with himself, with the need to protect her and the need to be with her. He needs to avoid a repeat of yesterday at all costs. But his mind right now is not as strong as his body and it's in desperation that he consciously tries to read where she is. He's never consciously reached for the bond quite in this way, but he reaches out with a mental finger tip and brushes the connection.

What flows back is nervousness, breathlessness and need. But there's no fear and no anger that he can see. Just a calm, almost melancholy hunger.

He groans a little. "Pepper...I hope you didn't leave heat on under anything that's going to burn."

Pepper shakes her head in the negative. "The oven is off and the pot on the stove needs to simmer. We're fine for two hours."

"Hang on." He lifts her up and then sets her back down with her butt resting just above him on the table. Her lips find his again as he quickly unfastens the buttons of her shirt.

"We need to move the dishes, that glass pan is hot." Pepper cautions. But her pupils are dilating as he pushes the fabric up and off of her shoulders. "Tony, be careful...ahhhhhh my god," as his hand cups her right breast at he lightly uses his breath to lightly caress the nipple.

"I much prefer you sans bra," he murmurs wickedly once he pulls back. "I think I'll probably change the dress code just to reflect that." He pushes the pan she's worried about away while he still has her shirt in his hand. Then he tucks the fabric under her head and lifts her chest off the table for ease of access. Her hands tangle in his hair as he gently suckles first one breast and then the other.

Her thighs are wrapped around his hips, trapping his erection between them. He can feel her heat through the fabric, and he's starting to think he can also feel her wetness, but he's determined. He will take this slow. He will leave her with no room to doubt just how very committed he is.

That, and he selfishly wants to drive her to release in his arms over and over. Something about the act just reassures him, like amidst all the chaos and uncertainty they can at least anchor themselves to the stability of flesh and breath.

He wonders how many times he can actually make her come. He looks forward to finding out. But either way he'll be deep enough under her skin by the time he's done that she'll never get him out of her again.

Pepper meanwhile, almost grimaces in pleasure. "Change the dress code, sir, and I promise we will never get any work done." Her hands are questing, mostly sightless, for the drawstring on his thin cotton pants.

"Didn't I mention it? We were ordered to take the rest of the week off," he mumbles as he kisses his way down her torso, staying just far enough away from her questing hands to maintain his perspective. He's fighting for control already, and knows that his first line of defense will be keeping those incredibly talented fingers on the table and out of his sweatpants.

Pepper is getting frustrated...he can feel it in the way she resists ever so slightly before she lets him press her back to recline across the table. "Something wrong?" he asks a little breathlessly as he captures on nipple between his lips.

"Just the fact that in this position I can't really _do_ much of anything but lie here and look pretty..." She can't seem to keep her hips still so he holds them with both his hands.

"You're doing plenty," he assures her as he deliberately thinks about what all her little shudders, and her tight muscles, and her skimming fingers are doing to him. Underneath him Pepper moans, and then she looks a little startled. Her nipples tighten impossibly harder as her belly tries to lift upward into the path of his southward traveling kisses. Her thighs fall open as her feet brace unconsciously on the edge of the table. "For the record, you are _so_ totally _cheating_." She can't bite back a little moan as his tongue traces her inner thigh just above the sensitive back of her knees.

He smiles against her soft skin, glad that she doesn't 'cheat' in return. If his inept fumbling has this effect, he doesn't want to know what she could do. Probably make him come without touching him or something.

Tony tries really hard not to think about that as he slips his hands down to her hips. "Now just be good and stay still," he teases, as his lips reach her core. He pauses there for several long moments, before he dives enthusiastically in.

And Pepper tries. She really does. He can see it in the way she clenches her fists and chews her lower lip almost convulsively as his fingers trace her entry. She smells sweet and musky and she _tastes_ like nothing he's ever encountered, something rich and thick and a little bit smoky. "Tony..." The words are a little bit scandalized... "You don't have to _do _this...I mean fingers work just fine."

"Fine is boring. You're going to get _better,_" he promises. And then he licks his lips and he gets down to business.

Heat instantly flares between them, nearly out of control. Tony's chest aches with it and he can hear Pepper's startled gasp, followed by a drawn out moan. He hands reach almost convulsively for his head, where they settle in his hair. He tightens his hands around her waist and forces himself to go slow, to ignore the urge to rush and claim and command. He parts his lips and tastes her and he can _feel_ her shock at the unfamiliar pleasure.

Nobody has ever done this to her before. He knows it and it makes him want to grin. To think he's her first at anything just satisfies something strong and rude and Neanderthal inside his Id.

To keep from being overcome by it he has to deliberately close it out otherwise he knows he'll be on her without much regard for anything but their mutual need for release. But he wants to enjoy the scenery along the way, and he's_ not_ going to let their bond dictate that. He's glad it's there, that it can enrich their experience, but it _won't_ get to control it.

And so he lingers, making both of them wait as he follows his fingers with his tongue, first around the rim of her opening, and then up to her clitoris, where he circles carefully before he gently shifts the hood back. She seems especially sensitive to the warmth of his breath, he realizes, which leads to all kind of interesting speculative possibilities about how he intends to exploit that particular trait for both their pleasure in the future.

"So have you ever tried using a dildo?" he whispers into the skin of her thigh. "Because there are several out there that have adjustable temperatures. And the results can be...unique...especially when paired with a little ice inside." She shudders hard at the idea, but he gets no corresponding mental image of her having tried it in the past. Instead all that he gets is the image of her alone in a bed with her hands gingerly working between her legs.

He swells even harder than he already was and has to pull back a little to maintain control. 'Oh, Pepper, you and I are going to have _fun_,' is all he can think as he slips two fingers inside her. His mouth he leaves where it is since she seems to enjoy it so much.

He pushes her gently, but with a intent that's relentless, until her breathing is harsh and her eyes are screwed shut. "Tony, _please_."

He smirks. "We're going to have to work on your stamina, Love." And then he sucks down hard on her clit.

When she comes it startles them both, and burns sweet and hot across their shared mental landscape. "Hey _no fair_," he all but whines. "I wasn't ready for that yet. I was barely getting warmed up."

"Anthony Stark," she murmurs as she floats through the last of the tremors rocking her body. "If you don't have those pants off five seconds, we're going to test how fair you think it is when I actually _try_ to return the favor." Tony actually whimpers as his brain supplies the details of that without any help from her. He obediently pulls on the drawstring of his pants and lets them slide off his hips.

She glides off the table and follows the fabric down to the floor, sliding the last of it into a cool cotton puddle at his feet. Then she's tossing the pants across the room and kneeling comfortably in the gap between his thighs. "Now where were we again...oh yes, I believe the words you used were be good and _don't move_." And then her hands are on his hips in an almost bruising grip and all he can feel is the wet and the heat of an unbelievably talented tongue.

_This _she is actually quite skilled at, not that he's aware enough to be indignant at the dichotomy of that particular fact yet.

His hands tighten around the edge of the table until they cramp, but he doesn't loosen his grip. It's the only thing standing between him and losing control. While he might have imagined this scenario...before...he hadn't actually thought he might _experience_ it. Now the reality is almost too much; the strength of her hands, the heat of her mouth, the sound of her breath... He doesn't dare look down because he knows the sight of her hair - or better, the sight of her blue eyes as she looks up at him - will send him over the edge. And he'd still has real plans for the table...

-Let it go,- an amused voice rings out in his head. -We've got plenty of time for a round two _after_ I _sanitize_ the damn kitchen.-

Then the pressure increases as she reaches out and plucks the bond between them herself, sending a low, heady _flood_ of pleasure his way. It throws him to the edge, leaving him gripping it with his fingernails. "Pepper..." he says with desperation, sending back an image of his own imminent climax.

-Let it _come_- She speaks in his brain again, this time with a warmth so deep it's nearly scalding. -I'm not going anywhere, Tony. They'll be plenty of chances to drag this out later.-

Then she speaks. She actually says the words. "_I love you_, just let it come."

"Pepper." He says her name clearly, and then lets go, falls into the rush that sweeps through him. When it's over her hands are still on his hips, and her chin is resting on his thigh as she smiles at him whimsically. "Well, I'm suddenly full. But _you_ still need to eat." Tony's eyes cross and he has to lean back against the table to keep from falling over. She snickers and pushes herself to her feet. "I need to stir the soup." And she's back across the kitchen while he tries to recover his higher brain processes again.

She feeds him breakfast, and then she excuses herself to go upstairs and clean up. Tony lets her go because frankly his head is still spinning a little. If he'd had any doubt that Virginia Potts is the woman for him, they're now gone. She's not the first woman to say something like she just did to him, but she _is_ the first woman to say it and sound totally natural instead of deliberately slutty.

He knows it's because her intent is different. She'd meant to tease, not shock. Pepper's comment is a reflection of their relationship, a statement based on mutual desire but also drawing on a relationship dynamic that already existed. There was no forced intimacy when she smiled at him, spoke to him, touched him…

But no matter how good the sex is, no matter how meaningful, he knows they still need to talk. There's numerous issues between them that need to be discussed and settled. So many in fact, he's not sure where he's going to start, though he thinks actually getting _dressed_ might be a good idea.

He's eating his second helping of the breakfast casserole she made and watching things blow up on TV when she emerges again.

She walks over to the stove and carefully taste tests the liquid, makes a little face and throws a little handful of kosher salt in. "I can not tell you how depressed I am by the state of your pantry. You have enough money to eat like a sultan and yet your refrigerator looks like what you'd expect to find in the average jock's dorm room kitchen."

There's no real harshness in the sentiment, just amused disbelief. Like she isn't aware he'd been living off of pizza and Ramen when she first started working for him. They'd had several epic battles in the first months over his dietary habits. She hadn't tried to stop him from eating whatever he wanted, but his orders had kept mysterious 'changing' to include several side orders of fruits and vegetables.

She'd also bought entrees for herself that smelled unbelievable, and she'd taken a pleasure in eating them that was almost obscene...

The most memorable day in his life had been the one that he realized that he was actually thinking of poaching her garlic salmon.

Of course that hadn't been all he'd wanted to get his hands on, but he had no desire to admit that to her anytime in the near future.

"It's depressing to cook for one," he says instead as he finishes his meal. It's part explanation and part excuse. Of course he'd never realized that she could cook, or he mind have changed his attitude on the subject, just to keep her in his house longer. Though he'd never admitted it aloud he loved the subtler tones of their unspoken domesticity.

"Then start inviting people over. You could use the chance to improve your general socialization. I mean honestly, Tony, this house could hold a dozen _easily_...and it's always _empty_. No wonder all your AI programs end up with such distinct personalities. You use them in place of actual _friends_."

Tony just states at her a moment, in disbelieving. "I can't believe you just said that…I mean don't you think that it's a little bit insulting?!"

Pepper pauses for a moment. Then looks upward toward the ceiling. "You're right, I'm sorry, _Jarvis_. That wasn't very tactful of me."

The kitchen television clicks on and Jarvis's image is standing there. "Don't apologize, Pepper, just convince Mr. Stark to start designing female AI varieties as well, and I will consider it forgiven."

Tony blinks. And then blinks some more. "Until now I was pretty sure I wasn't going insane. AI's don't _have_ gender, Jarvis – so what in heck are you implying?"

"Sir, male and females humans _do_ show different communication patterns and brain structures... I'm simply suggesting a little variety might benefit both your AI development projects and my day to day conversation. You've always used your own brain as a basic pattern matrix, I'm simply suggesting that I am certain that a few added scans of Ms. Potts's brain could benefit and produce a much more rounded background map for a female personality algorithm."

Tony snorts. "Pepper...is Jarvis insulting me? Because that's what it sounds like to me."

"No. I think he's asking, in a very technological sense, for a shot at getting _laid_."

Pepper's voice is calm as cucumbers, but her eyes are laughing, and down the bond he can sense an ever growing wave of outright hilarity. He groans. "Okay, so this is not a discussion I wanted to have. Ever. And certainly not today of all days."

Pepper snickers again. "Not ready to have the 'birds and the bees' talk with the little ones? Sorry dear, but the way I see it the oldest of your 'children' has reached that awkward adolescent stage."

"Are _you_ volunteering for the job?" Tony asks. She shakes her head in the negative.

"They're not my kids, Anthony. You're the one who gave 'birth.' I'm more of the crazy aunt who hands out cookies and explains why Daddy's _gone insane_…"

"Try 'stepmom' on for size, Pepper," Tony suggests with a little aggravation. "And don't you start calling me Anthony too."

Pepper snorts. "Tony, I refuse to be referred to as the sloppy seconds you ended up with after you had a bad breakup with a now reused circuit board. Even I have my limits. Aunt Pepper will be fine…it's worked just fine so far."

"Pepper…" It feels as if she's deliberately tying his brain in knots. He knows Pepper Potts. She is a wonderful conversationalist when need be, she manages small talk quite nicely, but she's not silly. And if this conversation isn't silly, then he doesn't know what it is.

Tony finds her eyes and holds them with his, or tries to at least. She's very deliberately looking away.

He wonders if he's surprised that she's in full avoidance mode. After yesterday he's surprised she's even functioning as well as she is. But watching her try to hide in plain sight is causing his head to hurt, almost literally.

"Come sit down, Pepper. Please. We're already going to be eating for days on what you've already made. Just please come sit down."

There's a flicker of uneasiness, but then she nods. "Do you really want to do this at the kitchen table?" What 'this' is she doesn't extrapolate, to herself or to him.

"You're right. It might be a little distracting considering..." He lets that trail off, but he's still got a nice crisp image in his mind of her arching into his touch. "Where would you prefer to talk?" He sees her debate it, and gets a quick mental shot of her office, but then she's shaking her head and shrugging her shoulders a little.

"How long has it been since you're been on the balcony? Not to show off, but just to enjoy the view?"

"Too long," he says softly. He stands and holds out his hand to her. She takes it, a little reluctantly, and they head toward the balcony doors.

He waits until they out in the sunshine, seated side by side yet apart on the padded bench that runs along the north side of the wall. Well, it's more like a massive sectional, but telling people there's a sectional on his patio has always sounded just a little ridiculous.

Tony gives her time to soak in the heat and the light, gives her time to settle her nerves before he reaches over and slides his hand under hers. She raises her hand, and it hovers above his for a moment before she sets it back down so that their pinkies are just barely brushing. And he allows her the space for now.

"What are you thinking about?" he asks as he watches the waves . They can't see the shore from here, but the undulation of the water is calming.

Pepper looks at him briefly and smiles a little before looking back at the ocean. "Truthfully? I've been working pretty hard about _not_ thinking all day. It's liable to get me in less trouble just to be if yesterday is a good indication."

He shudders, pulls his hand away because he doesn't want her to see the image of a grey room that immediately dominates his mind. "I think I would prefer to have you thinking and in trouble," he says with a voice that rasps a little. "Than to think you're shutting yourself away and choosing to just not deal with anything."

Her palms tense a little, and then she's covering his closer hand with hers.

"Tony, there's a difference between avoiding an issue completely and knowing you've already over thought it so many times you've almost destroyed what it is in the process."

She shakes her head. "I'm just trying to respect my limits, here, and prevent another shouting match. Yesterday was hell for both of us, and if I don't at least try and 'go easy' and give things a little time to heal I'm likely to just overload myself all over again. And you really don't deserve to live through that again."

That makes sense, and Tony knows it makes sense, but that room in her mind still terrifies him. Slowly he pushes the fear aside. They're both silent again as they watch the water.

"Is there anything I can ask you without feeling like a bully?" he finally inquires, because he doesn't know where he's welcome to push and where he isn't. He can imagine how tender her mind must be right now and the last thing he wants to do is hurt her.

She takes a deep breathe. "How about I just apologize. For being a thoughtless, reckless, repressed little bitch whose tendency toward self avoidance almost got you killed yesterday."

Then she looks him right in the eye. "Because I was, I am, and for the record, I'm _terribly_ sorry."


	6. Chapter 7

Tony wants to tell her there's nothing to apologize for, that she thought she was doing what was right and it's the thought th

Tony wants to tell her there's nothing to apologize for, that she thought that what she was doing was _right_ and it's the thought that counts. But he can't. Because as hard it is for both of them to cope with, her good intentions led to decisions that they both know were utterly _wrong_. What she's been doing has been self-destructive; she's been tearing herself apart. He can't _stand _that she seems so intent on placing his perceived welfare so high above her own.

And he doesn't want to admit it, doesn't want to hurt her, but it can't be allowed to happen again.

So while he understands her intent, he can't fully accept the apology.

"The thing I want you to apologize for, Pepper, is what you did to _yourself_," he finally says, though it's hard to force the words out. The woman in front of him jerks just a little, but she remains on the bench. "Pepper, you are _important_, and in ripping yourself apart as if you could someone leave me out of the situation, you were letting _both_ of us bleed to death. I mean, yes, I know that you don't always find it easy to trust me, but was it such a terrible secret that you were ready to let it kill you? Because I can forgive a lot of things, but you hurting yourself…that's another story. You don't get to pull this kind of crap, Pepper. Because even before this damn link formed I _cared _that you were healthy, and that you stayed alive."

His hands tighten at his sides and he forces his eyes to meet her own. The woman looking back is stunned, a little bit wary. She doesn't seem to know what to say, because her mouth opens and clothes several times before she speaks.

Then she sighs a little. "I wasn't deliberately risking my life Tony. I – it just got out of control faster than I knew how to deal with. It took me a very long time to even admit what was happening... and once I knew for sure? Well I had to figure out how to handle it in a matter than was fair to both you and me. For a long time I didn't know if it was even _reasonable_ to expect you to be involved. I mean let's face it; this was not something you had given any indication you wanted. And when I _finally_ accepted that I'd have to tell you…? There was just no right time or place to broach the subject."

She sighs. "I wanted to do it right Tony. I didn't realize that toward the end it was going to start messing with my thinking. If I had listened to my mother better, I might not have been so unaware, but I just didn't _pay attention_. Until it was too late and the only thing that seemed ethical at all was for me to simply _leave_."

She's doing it again, making his chest ache with the pain of how close he'd come to losing her. He's not sure if he's more hurt by the implication that she'd thought it might be none of his business, or that she somehow had to 'spruce up' the words for him. "_Reasonable,_ Pepper? My god what are you thinking? If I'm not _involved,_ then what in the hell were we talking about on that roof top, what did you think I was asking for on the day before the press conference?"

She flinches again and he feels her retreat. Not a great deal but enough to make him hold his hand up to stave off the argument. "Look, I'm sorry…this is not the time for that subject. I didn't mean to get us sidetracked." He draws a deep breath and forces it out, shakes his head and then meet her eyes again. "For the record I'm 'involved' up to my neck in this. And I would have been even if you _weren't_ psychically bound to me. The next time that you can't find the right way to tell me something, Pepper, _please_ just tell me the _wrong way_. Because no matter how strange the truth is it's still the truth nonetheless, and dealing with funky ass shit is still easier than being left in the dark to guess what's actually happening."

He thinks of the last few weeks, the pain and the terror. He thinks of the number of times he'd gone to bed terrified of what she might say when she came in the next morning. He'd thought she was dying and that there was nothing he could do. Compared to that the truth had been an utter relief.

He thinks of the number of times he'd been afraid that she wouldn't come in the next morning at all.

And she'd thought her being psychic wasn't 'reasonable' for her to expect him to handle.

But Pepper doesn't see this, that or she's shielding the link. Her own eyes are painful too, and more than a little apologetic, but they're still focused inward. It's hard to accept she might be so currently blind to his pain, but then she's lost in her own. "Sometimes there are no words, Tony, at least any that make actual sense. The sum up a lifetime of complications isn't easily defined. You talk about the right or the wrong way to spill the beans, but sometimes there's no way at all."

She's not sure she can _ever_ explain to him what the last few weeks were like. How she'd been so consumed by the sheer weight of things that she could barely stand upright. Her tongue had been tied, and there had been no way to begin. There'd been only an ending she couldn't seem to find a way out of, that she'd delayed as long as she could for the sake of holding on to him.

That the act of trying to leave might in fact set her free was something that she had never even considered.

That kiss had been her redemption, as awful as the whole thing sounded. It had been her way out of a jail cell she didn't know how to pick the lock for, because it made the escape no longer her responsibility. Kissing him had _been_ her last desperate effort - her manner of making him ask the questions for her, when she couldn't make herself face them fully.

She hadn't realized it until after, but that's where everything had always led to. To a basement and a man who she could no more let go of than she could bring herself to hold.

He didn't understand that, though. And even now, though she wants to, she has no words to explain things.

"I mean what was I supposed to say, Tony? That wouldn't have sounded utterly ridiculous? 'By the way I've been kind repressing things I didn't want to talk about for years, and as a result I kind of overlooked the fact that I accidentally linked your head to mine using my brain?' Oh yes that would have gone over really well." She shakes her head and drops her eyes. "You're _scientist_, Tony, and on my good days I try and be a rationalist as well. How do you share a problem like that without being _crazy_?"

Because she had _felt_ half crazy. She'd wondered if she'd just finally gone nuts. After Afghanistan, she'd wondered it every damn day, and the doubt had grown.

How was she supposed to talk about the impossible when she barely acknowledged it to herself? This was just so far out of her comfort zone that she wasn't even sure where home was anymore.

She'd been living in hell. And he wonders why she'd lacked the words to somehow set herself free?

She doesn't say any of this, but suddenly Tony moves to kneel in front of her. He must be getting something from her end down the bond, because he's suddenly enfolding her in a tight hug. "You could have just said you were hurting. That was all that I would have needed to hear… You didn't need to have all the answers _before_ you came to me."

The words make something in her tremble, and she locks down the sharp stab of pain. "Yes, well there were also other considerations, too. Like the fact you love the spotlight and I loathe it. Like the fact that I never had any intention of using the powers I have more than I already do, and that's going to drive you crazy. Because it will, Tony, I know it will. You're like a kid with some shiny new toy you are going to want to take apart, only that toy is my _life_."

He opens his mouth like he wants to protest but she shakes her head frantically. "And don't tell me I'm wrong…I'm an empath and I _know_ you. You love being abnormal. You _want_ to stand out from the crowd. But me? I'm the diametric opposite. I like my life behind the scenes. And you'll be constantly pushing me…"

"Pushing? Do you see me pushing?" He smiles for a moment but then it fades away. "Though speaking of pushing... Yesterday...when I offered you a choice. When I was willing to let you leave. Did you actually have a say or did Malcolm somehow make you...?" He can't bring himself to finish the sentence.

Pepper rolls her eyes. "I mean pushing for _change_, Tony. Pushing for me to take paths I've never had any desire to travel. Pushing me into the spotlight or down into your lab."

She draws a deep breath. "And no, Malcolm didn't make me stay with you last night, he just made me face up to myself. He made me look at what I was doing and it's likely effect if I kept denying reality. _That's_ his gift...he can keep people from lying, sometimes to others, but also to themselves. He told me what I didn't want to hear but needed to know to get my head back on straight."

She reaches out her hand. "I chose to stay because he's right about there being no other options. Well no other options we could both _live with_ and be any whole kind of people."

Tony lets out the breath he hadn't known he'd been holding and relaxes once again. As long as _she_ has made the decision, he can live with how it came about. As for the rest of what she says, they obviously need to get a few things straight. "You're _damn right_ I want to know a hell of a lot more about you and all your gifts. And I'm going to force you to deal with them too."

He draws a deep breath and continues on, "But only because it's _you_, Pepper. Well, you and me. Your Malcolm keeps insinuating that you're not the only psychic in this relationship, so I'm involved in this too. It's about understanding _what's happening_... It's about making sure that you're happy and healthy and nothing like yesterday can _ever _happen again."

He squeezes her hands. "It's a about making sure neither of us is stuck living in fear anymore."

Pepper hones in on the beginning of his statement. "And if I don't _ever_ want to use my gifts, Tony? Can you live with that? If I say my abilities are off limits beyond diagnostics… you're going to be content to let it be?" There's pain in her, raw and absolutely certain. "Because I don't _want_ to be a superhero Tony, I just want to live my life. I want to do good in the same way that I've always done. Because I help _a lot_ of people, and when I help them, I'm just me…

"And I'd still help them if this thing in my head shut off and I were normal, for tomorrow and probably the rest of my life. Because I enjoy being useful, because I am, and because it has never been about what other people think. I do good because I can, and I want you to tell me you understand why that's good enough for me."

Tony just states at her, like he doesn't know what to say. Which is fact he probably doesn't, because the dichotomy between them is enough to make his head hurt. She says she doesn't want to be a 'hero' he acknowledges, but by the words she stated above, she already _is_. She probably always has been.

How many benefits had she organized? How many meetings had she saved? How many people got up in the morning and went to work and fed their families because she's helped to stabilize his company?

But she's afraid he might try and make her a 'hero?' He wants to cry with the sheer disbelief.

Of course he also wants to _laugh_, but she'd never understand why. So he settles for just letting her vent.

She raises a hand and pinches between her eyes. "That's the thing I'm most afraid of, Tony. That you're going to start expecting that this whole bond automatically makes me something other than me. I'm not a car, Stark. You don't get to poke around like I'm some kind of engine and try and turn me into a sports racer if I don't want to be. I am what I am and I'm going to stay this way. I'm what I'm supposed to be."

Tony looks up at her for a long time, composing whatever it is that he wants to say. When he just says, "No," it seems like a Herculean effort for a single word, but then he continues. "You're _not_ a car. You're not a machine. And you have always been what I needed. And if I start to forget than I don't want you to take it as a sign you I want to change you. I want you to take it as a sign that I'm an _ass_ and you need to haul back and _slap_ me.

"Pepper..." He wants to take her hand so badly, but doesn't. "I will always try to give you whatever privacy that you ask for and that I can give, but any concept of privacy seems dicey right now, because we're not totally separate. I _feel_ you. I...see...things that you're thinking. Hear your voice in my head." Tony's voice is troubled, as if maybe he isn't accepting all of this as easily as she'd thought. "And I know you're having some of the same problems. Though it's not entirely due to you, apparently." His brow furrows. "I'm pretty sure that _I'm_ not the stronger of us in this particular department. And that's a new feeling for me…"

His smile is weak. "When it comes to this bond, I think you might have the upper hand, Ms. Potts. And I'm...uncomfortable...because I don't think you know what you can do with the strength you have any more than I do. And I'm scared of that fact, because so far the only person you want to hurt with these new abilities is you."

"What you're being too polite to say," Pepper cuts him off, "Is that I'm fucking _lost._"

And just like that Pepper's springing off the bench, moving around him to pace across the decking. "Which is half of why I'm so angry, Tony. Because I am supposed to be the one who knows what's going on here, but the truth is I don't have a _clue_."

She draws in a breath that sounds suspiciously ragged. "And you're _not helping_ Tony, with your Peter Pan impression…"

He startles at that, and tries to deny. "I have never made light…" Or at least he thinks he hasn't. He starts scanning his memory, but she's not finished.

"Like hell you haven't. You treat it like it's a game. And I suppose it is if you consider that it is played in pairs, and it has the potential to _kill you_." Pepper is shaking her head, though, and her eyes are filled with agony. "That's why set me off yesterday...after we...when it was over, I mean. The whole world had just _imploded_ in my head and you had to make a sarcastic quip about how I'd held something back. I was falling apart and you were making cracks like a ten year old who's been denied a damn cookie."

She looks at him a moment, then looks back out at the water. "You just don't seem to get that this is _dangerous_. That this is my version of _Afghanistan_. Except I don't get to get rescued and go back home at the end of it. This is home for me now and I'm going to have to learn to live with being at least partly _afraid_ all the time."

The tears finally spill. "And I hate that Tony, but I also _chose_ it. It's my life from now on. But that doesn't mean that I don't hurt, and that it doesn't totally exhaust me."

Her words slice into him like razors, not because they're cruel, but because he can't imagine how she can say them and know they're the truth and yet keep on breathing. He can't stand to see this kind of pain, but he's beginning to realize he can't remove it from her, he can only ease the intensity. "What are you afraid of, Pepper? That we'd die together? That probably would have happened even _without_ the bond. Look at the life that we lead... We take on the world because we can't bring ourselves not to, and with us working together we maximize our potential, and the bond really has nothing to do with it. We've _always_ been that way: from the day you picked up the data crystal and faced down Stane. From the day I saw you in danger and I stepped into the suit.

We've always been halfway crazy, Pepper. Even if we didn't talk about it, that has always been the truth."

"It's not the same as it was," she repeats stubbornly. "It's one thing to chose to risk your own life, and another to know you're risking someone else, even if it isn't deliberately."

He's looking at her like he doesn't understand, and she just wants to weep. "Tony, you deserved to have had a real choice in this, one without all the ramifications – I mean honestly 'do this or Pepper's going to die?' That is not an actual _choice_! I screwed up though and started this out of ignorance, and now you're paying right along with me.

So you bet that I'm angry…"

"Angry why? Because I am who I am. Because you life is important…because doing right might actually matter to me…?"

"No, I'm angry because you're being too damn reasonable, and if you won't get pissed at me for screwing it up then I'm doing it for you!"

His eyes narrow like he's angry as well, but all Pepper can really feel from him is intense concentration. And that's almost worse. She knows Tony, knows his determination, knows how easily he allows gut reactions rule over logic even though at least half his brain is essentially a machine that needs the logic to survive.

He's never turned the full strength of his brain on her before. Yes, she's had his attention, and his admiration, and even his focus before. But this is different. And it's a little scary.

"Tony, this link has the potential and the eventual likely outcome of hurting or killing you, and at least half of the reason for that is me. I hate to break it to you, super-genius, but you were not the one who unintentionally initiated it when you _should have known better_. I screwed up, Stark. I screwed up big time, and it just makes me so helplessly, uselessly _angry_. And you don't have to like that I feel it, but get used to the fact that it's there, because the alternative is stuffing it down, and we both know where that leads to…"

Pepper's gasping like she's out of breath, but down the link she is stable but rational, and more importantly she's in control.

Tony doesn't know whether to be afraid of that or to cry in relief.

So instead he nods, because he can't change her feelings. It's unreasonable to tell anyone not to feel anything, because emotion is without consent. That doesn't stop him from laying out his argument though, because as much as she's angry at herself, he's angry at her lack of personal mercy. "Why, Pepper? _Why _should you have known better? From the little I've gathered, you are what you said: untrained. And every bit as lost as me. You didn't do _any_ of this deliberately or consciously. If anything, someone could say that it's _my fault_ that this thing even formed since I was being so irresponsible that you felt the need to use your powers on me in the first place."

He shakes his head. "_Yes_, you somehow brought this about, but I created the _need_ for it. I mean after all, who's the risk taker, who's more likely to get the other one killed? You may hold the right to the wrong of how this started, but not the right to how it will likely end. Because you're not the one more likely to screw up on a regular basis. You're probably _not_ the one whose foolishness is most likely to get us killed. That burden belongs squarely on _me_."

He holds out his hand, a silent invitation for her to come back. "We have to start forgiving each other. And ourselves, or honestly what's the point? Pepper, this bond... _Yes_, it makes us dependent on each other, but only in a few new and slightly unusual ways. As far as I'm concerned, I've been dependent on you for _years_ now. That's intensified but it hasn't changed." He draws in a deep breath, clears his throat, wonders at the stinging that's in the back of his eyes. "Would it really be so awful for you to be a little dependent on me? To let me be the one to hold you up for a change?"

God, he is _here_, and he's not going anywhere. Doesn't even want to go anywhere. And he doesn't know how to tell her since words don't seem to be working. "Please, Pepper. I know it's kind of an unfair swap from your perspective, but won't you at least give me a chance to be sufficient for _somebody_? To try and be whole?"

Something about what he says makes her eyes flare and she strides across the flagstone to pin him to his seat. "You're not the one I think is lacking," she informs him before she slants her mouth across his and starts kissing him for all he's worth.

Tony moans against the physical onslaught, but the renewed touch leaves him with a better insight of her. There's a terrible fragility about her, inside her. And he realizes she's depending on him a great deal more than she's willing to show. It's both a pain and a relief to have this very real acknowledgement of their mutual dependency. He slows the kiss, tempers her passion without killing it and drags her down onto the cushions beside him. And then holds her. Holds her, and loves her, and offers her any part of him that she needs.

When she finally breaks the kiss, she buries her face in the side of his neck in what is now almost a intimately familiar gesture. "Breaking patterns is hard, Tony, and I get tired as hell, but I'm _trying_. I promise I'm trying."

"I know," he assures her. "I know. And feel free to tell me if I start pushing." He angles her face up so he can smile at her. "You know me. All or nothing. Zero to 120 in 3.6 seconds."

"That slow?" she murmurs when she drops her head again, but he can feel the way she's smiling back against the skin of his neck. Her hands run up and down his upper back in quiet, perfect circles that threaten to turn him to jelly.

"Pepper?" He asks after a moment, as he feels another knot untie somewhere under his left shoulder blade. "Are you _aware_ of what you're doing? To my shoulder, I mean. Because I don't remember you mentioning that you had that kind of talent when you explained how your gift works..."

She just laughs softly. "This is what it feels like to be relaxed, Tony. I'm just...helping the process along a little, helping the body remember."

This time he feels it as she... He doesn't know what she's doing, actually. He just knows that it feels like she actually slips _inside_ him. And of course, being aware of it makes him instantly _hard_ even though she's basically turning him to putty in her hands.

He thinks he's going to like getting used to the dichotomy.

"If this is one of those skills you've always had, but never mentioned, then I might have to be a little indignant that you never said anything." His voice is a little strangled, but also clearly teasing. He closes his eyes and prays the comment, much like the one last night, doesn't bring offense.

Pepper only snickers, digging in her right hand with a little more pressure. "Oh yes, that would have been brilliant...a great way to stay below the radar. I was trying to keep you from paying too much attention, remember? There were days it was like dancing on the edge of a razor as it was."

He presses his lips to her shoulder and sighs. "I love you, Pepper. Would it have really been so awful to have the truth between us even back then?"

"If you'd actually figured out I was 'special' – Tony, I'm already a public freak in the business world. I didn't need you dragging me down to the basement to answer stupid surveys and have EEGs several times every week just to drive the point home. I know how you are when you're obsessed, and I don't like being a lab rat or a trophy up on anybody's shelf."

Tony lifts his head and looks down at her, more than a little alarmed. The fact that she just said that is outweighed by the fact that she seems to think it's _true_. "Is that really what you thought I would do? Or is it just what you were afraid I might turn into if I ever found out?"

"Neither. Maybe both. The one other person I've told...well it was when I was still in college and it didn't exactly go smoothly. He ended up more obsessed with what I could do, than he was actually interested in me. And I draw the line at sleeping with somebody who spends most of the evening being resentful of what I didn't ask for. It was all just a little too dog in the manger for me."

Tony strangles the instinctive urge to break the kneecaps of anyone who's hurt her. Once the urge is past, he then has to wonder... "How much am I going to have to spend?" She looks at him in what is obvious confusion... "On my apology. I probably owe you at least one ridiculously expensive _something_ after all of these years…."

She chuckles softly. "Apology for what?"

"I know I'm not easy to work with. However, I've always considered it my one saving grace that somehow I managed to never cross the line with you. But if keeping my mouth shut wasn't enough..." He grimaces. Then thinks of every inappropriate thought he's ever harbored. Every time he's been tempted to fuck her over his living room table…

"How much do I owe you for the things you had to see?"

Pepper blinks for a moment, as if trying to sort out what he's saying. And then she relaxes against him, curling into his side bonelessly. "You can't be blamed for your _urges,_ Tony. You're not the only one who's ever had them. It'll called being human." She yawns a little, snuggles closer to his side while her hand strokes his bare chest. "For the record I try to judge people by what they do not by what they think, because that's the courtesy everyone else extends to me. Besides, frankly most days I don't want to know what everyone feels. It's just too damn exhausting."

He blinks at that, reaches up a hand to stroke her hair. "That's it? No yelling or accusations? I'm not going to get kneed for being an insensitive jerk?"

"You've always been that, Tony. If it really bothered me, would I have fallen in love with you irregardless?"

Pepper shifts to her stomach, sighing contently at the heat from the sun. "Besides, it could have been worse. I mean, yes, seeing out your women was a bit uncomfortable some of the time. But all the comments they made or thought came off looking a little _ridiculous_, when you consider the truth of things."

She snorts. "I mean seriously – they saw me as a threat? Why?! I was your employee and a total _geek _who had no life. Of course I couldn't tell them that, though. Even if I knew at that time that you weren't even _remotely_ attracted to me."

She catches him with that in the act of swallowing, and he chokes. He can feel her moving to look at him with concern as he coughs, but he just shakes his head. "I wasn't _attracted_ to you, Pepper? I thought you said you were an _empath_."

She frowns a little. "Last I checked I am...but I don't keep it on all the time. I would have _noticed_, Tony...you _weren't_. Yes, we flirted at work, but then this is _you_, you would flirt with a _chair_ if it were all that was handy."

She looks absolutely serious. Like she isn't lying or joking. And somewhere in the back of his head, something clicks in the back of Tony Stark's brain. "You're telling me that the night on the roof is the _only_ time you've thought I was attracted to you?" The thought was remarkable, because yes, he'd trained himself out of the habit of speculating daily how good they'd be together...but he still hadn't mastered refraining on a weekly basis.

"Tony before you got back from Afghanistan I was about as interesting to you as _office furniture_. You hardly noticed I was there unless I managed to piss you off."

She shrugs. "No offense...you were still a better boss than a lot that I've had to deal with. I mean I pretty much catered to your whims whenever I could without letting you destroy your business in the process, and in return I had all but complete autonomy to do the things I liked most about the job without you constantly micromanaging me."

Tony groans. He wonders if he somehow managed to hide how he felt from her in the same way he's somehow helped bind them together or if Pepper's just naturally blind to deeply emotional situations that involve her - if she's just like any other woman when it comes to their personal relationships. "Pepper, I gave you complete autonomy because if I hadn't given you that space than I would have either gotten you into my bed or driven you away in the process of _trying_ to get you there. And even if I'm sometimes a bastard I still knew even then that you were the best thing that had ever happened to me."

She blinks just a little and shakes her head. "There's no need to sugarcoat or lie...Tony, I considered it a _compliment_. I mean come on, I've seen the way you treat ninety-nine percent of the women that you meet...being neutral gendered was a relief in comparison. I mean yes I know sometimes we got royally on each other's nerves, but if the sex thing had been there between us all the time you never would have let me spend enough time with you to see who you _really_ were, and if I hadn't seen that I guarantee that I _never _would have told you the truth about me."

He sighs in exasperation, and concedes part of the topic. "Fine. The first couple years, you're right. I saw you in exactly the way you presented yourself. And I didn't find it terribly attractive. You were too serious, and too professional, and too...non-floozy-ish to keep my attention.

"But Pepper..." He seems to be losing any ability to make an effective argument. "Those are the things I appreciate most about you now. And the things I find the most attractive. And that's in addition to your body. And your mind.

"You're _real_, Pepper. All of you. And for the last couple of years you've been more tempting than you realize."

The woman in front of him didn't say a word in reply. Instead she just lays there staring at him like he'd sustained some kind of head wound. She gapes at him. Opens and closes her mouth several times. Then shakes her head like she's unable to compute what she's hearing..

"Tony...I have _seen_ the women you sleep with –"

"Pepper...if I wasn't going to think about you the entire time I had to find women who were nothing like you."

She gapes at him again, then starts shaking her head. "No way, Uh uh. I would have known that. I am _not your type_, Tony Stark. Or more precisely if it weren't for this link I would probably never have been. I'm too much of a geek and you, well you're nothing more than a super smart, non-recovering adrenaline junkie."

"You're a geek?" he asks, quite seriously. He blinks at her. "And why do you assume I couldn't be attracted to a fellow geek? Seems like a pretty good basis for a relationship, actually."

"Tony, you are not a geek. You don't come anywhere _near_ to the category. If we discount your obvious taste in clothing, you are at worst a _nerd_ with playboy tendencies. I on the other hand do spreadsheets for fun when I'm not watching the Discovery channel. If that doesn't make me a geek, I don't know what does. Albeit I hide it quite well. I suppose if I was to be more explicit I'd say I'm a geek with a decent businesses world persona and a high heels fetish that hides me."

Tony just looks at her earnest face in bewilderment and wondered when he'd fallen into the twilight zone.

"Geek, nerd...same species, Pepper. And you know I'd rather be in jeans and a t-shirt than a suit and tie." He props himself up on one elbow so he can look down at her. "And watching the Discovery channel doesn't make you a geek. It just proves you're intelligent enough to want to know more about the world around you."

"You are _not_ a geek, Tony, you have fashion sense. You collect _muscle cars_...is this ringing any bells?" He can't tell if she's amused or scandalized by his suggestion.

Her lips curl up in warning. "Anthony Stark, I strongly suggest you stop laughing at me!"

He can't though. He honestly can't, because it's just so damn _funny_. "Pepper..." He wraps his arms around her as he rolls her onto her back. "We're not in high school anymore. What is _wrong_ with being either a geek or a nerd?"

"Nothing precisely, as both groups tend to run society...still in my experience they run in different circles, and they don't play together particularly nicely."

She shrugs a little. "It's _okay_ that you're not a geek. If you were I wouldn't be as useful to you as I am. I'm sort of your liaison to regular society. You're a genius, Tony, and no that's isn't a compliment, it gets you in more trouble than any one person should be allowed to live through, but it's the trade off I guess. The point is you are what you are because you're what is needed in the world. And when I'm not falling apart, I'm what I need to be as well. The fact that we get along at all though, is not the normal way of things. I mean I'll be honest, if I were less used to dealing with people just like you, I probably would have _strangled_ you my first week on the job."

"What do you mean, 'people like me'?" Tony asks, a little confused

"Savant geniuses Tony, I was _raised_ by one. Granted my mom wasn't ever famous, and her gifts weren't comparable to Malcolm or mine's, but she was an artist of a caliber I haven't seen since she died. And yes, she was also every bit as high maintenance, and impatient with my nature as you get. I mean I swear, you two have almost identical readings in your aura whenever you're resisting the urge to _throttle_ me."

This time when he starts laughing, Pepper only rolls her eyes and waits for him to stop.

"You're proving my point," she says

Tony just shakes his head. "Pepper, if you're talking about what I think you're talking about, your mother and I definitely don't want to 'throttle' you in the same way."

She shakes her head. "I _know_ where this is going...and for the record, Malcolm's not the best place to be getting a rounded opinion on the woman who raised me...I mean _yes_, she was a little 'odd' sometimes, but she had more courage then I've ever seen and even if we clashed, I know that she desperately loved me..."

"It was just the way we were wired, Tony. Malcolm never understood that. He slept with my mom when she was in one of her 'settled' phases, then couldn't live with the way she was when she reverted to her normal status of gypsy. Basically he never forgave her for being who she actually was. What he thought he was going to end up with at the end of that night was me...which he did, just _not_ in the manner he'd intended."

Tony puts his hand over her mouth, just to keep her rambling. "Pepper, I'm sure your mother loved you just as I'm sure you did things to provoke motherly wrath. However, I am _not_, your mother. And I am hugely relieved by this fact."

She glares at him from underneath his fingers, and then her 'voice' rings out inside his head. -Fine then, Stark, if I'm missing the 'point' get your hand off my mouth and just show me.-

His smile is slow and dangerous. He shifts his hand but leaves his thumb teasing her lips. And then he thinks back to a few months before Afghanistan when they'd been in New York for a meeting of the board. He'd left the room with Obadiah and the rest, chatting and being generally egotistical. He'd waited for Pepper for awhile, but had gotten impatient because he'd had other plans for the evening.

When he'd gone back inside to collect her, the setting sun had been shining through the floor to ceiling windows of the conference room... And the white shirt he hadn't seen since had become essentially transparent in the direct light.

He remembers the way his mouth had immediately dried at the sight of her silhouetted breasts, covered only with a flimsy layer of silk. She'd been half bent over the table, caught in the act of gathering not only her things but everything that had been left behind. He'd wanted to walk up to her and push her down towards the table while he pressed his rampant arousal against her from behind.

And then she'd shifted and bent lower, giving him a straight view down her shirt. If near transparency hadn't been enough, he'd gotten a good view of her ridiculously low cut bra and most of her perfect breasts.

That's when he'd wanted to strangle her, because it wasn't fair. She aroused him so easily without even a clue, and because she'd also made him respect her, he couldn't make a move.

Of course, just the thought of getting his hands around her neck had become charged and sexual - as it usually did when he wanted to strangle her, and he'd had to slip back out into the hallway to get a grip on himself.

When she'd emerged from the office only a moment or so later she'd had her hands full of paper, and she'd given him a strange sort of sideways glance as he stepped forward to take the box she was carrying. "Are you all right, Sir? You seem a little off."

He'd been relieved for the weight of something in his hands that kept them from straying anywhere else.

"Some of us have _plans_ for the evening, Pepper. Of the kind that don't involve reorganizing the closets or watching cable TV." Looking back on it now, he winces at the apparent harshness of the statement and the almost undetectable wince his deflecting comment had caused.

Tony focuses his eyes back on her rather than on memory. She looks a little stunned. "Do you need more proof, Pepper? Because I can think of a few other times I wanted to 'strangle' you. And I'll happily share." His thumb is still dancing around the edge of her lips.

She shakes her head, and pulls back just a little. "No...thank you, Tony. I think I've seen enough." But there is confusion...so much confusion in her eyes. It speeds her heart rate at almost the same intensity as the mounting sexual tension does.

"What is it, Pepper?" Tony removes his hand from her with difficulty. "I can see the gears turning up there. Talk to me." He wonders if she finds that slightly aggressive side of him disturbing. If she does he doesn't question that he'll never go there with her, or even want to. Because her comfort with him - in everything - is essential to them.

Her eyes focus back on him again, and she shakes her head a little. "Nothing's wrong...just...reanalyzing I guess... I can't believe that I missed...I mean how on earth did I not see." She shrugs. "It's funny how one piece of information you didn't have before puts an entire situation in a totally different context."

"I think I might know what you mean," he says quietly before smiling at her and kissing her softly.

"Do you?" She asks the question softly, before she shakes her head in exasperation. "Okay I retract that question, I threw you into the twilight zone yesterday morning."

He shrugs, as if it's of no real importance. "All that matters is that I can start to understand now, Pepper."

"You're more forgiving than you should be." She says, as she reaches out to cup his face. "It bugs me, but I guess that in the end it's just part of the whole that turns you into you."

"Mmm..." Tony considers her, then carefully says, "Pepper, if you don't stop degrading yourself, I really am going to want to strangle you. And I mean that in a completely non-erotic way."

Her eyes pull wide and she drops her hand. "I don't..." He doesn't let her finish the sentence.

"I love you," he whispers against her lips. "If I wouldn't let anyone else speak badly of you, why would I let you?" And he kisses her deeply but with all the love he feels.

For a moment she freezes and he feels her urge to pull back, but then she's leaning forward instead, and wrapping a hand around the back of his neck. "We'll talk about it, later," she murmurs vaguely. "Right now I suggest we go back inside."

"Inside?" he asks. "What's wrong with outside?" He traces the freckles on her cheeks with adoration.

"Do you want me to get sunburned? Because I'll peel like ticker tape." Her voice is amused as she starts to trail her fingers down the arch of one of his ears.

Tony shivers as her light touch ripples through him. "Someday I'm going to go catch you when you've put on sun block," he warns as he reluctantly moves off him.

She snickers lightly. "I don't keep any here. Though occasionally I keep some in the gym bag in my office when I decide to go surfing on my lunch break."

"I have sun block," he reminds her. "Actually, why don't you stay here while I go get it."

She blushes. "Aren't you afraid of burning in uncomfortable places? If you want to get naked, Stark, I suggest we limit doing so to the water. I mean, it's what I do half the time when I want to surf and I don't have my swimsuit here."

His eyes dilate and she can feel his breathing pick up. She knows he's remembering at least one time she came back from lunch smelling like chlorine and putting the pieces together. "You skinny dip in the pool?" he asks a little faintly.

She smirks. "No, I usually put on a t-shirt on my way back up from the beach, don't want to be caught on the cameras." She watches as his eyes cross a little. "Oh get your mind out of the gutter, Stark. It's perfectly safe, you own a private beach."

"Not private enough," he mutters. Because the thought of anyone but him near a naked Pepper is enough to give to give him a stroke.

Pepper is amused. "Don't be such a baby, Stark, you have a private gate to access it. It's not like anyone ever had the chance to intrude. The waves are awesome after six hours of sorting through email, and it clears my mind for the rest of the day." She rolls her eyes. "Honestly, you make it sound like I'm sneaking off in my car somewhere to pull a damned vibrator out of my glove box."

He whimpers, and then as far as he's concerned indoors is no longer an option. He kisses her a little desperately as he shifts his body over hers. There's so much to be said of his posture. It's domineering, and a little arrogant, and demanding, but it's also born out of love because anything that wants to get at her will have to go through him first.

"Mine!" his attitude screams, and his mind is preoccupied with images of watching her pleasure herself while all he can do is watch.

She shudders at the sudden change of position, letting him shift her backward toward on end of the cushioned seat. "Why do I have a feeling I'm about to get sunburn?" she asks a little whimsically.

He's not certain about that. The way things have been going lately...

He strips off her shirt and then his own before he sits back on his heels to examine her in the sunlight. Her skin is pale and dotted with golden flecks in this light. His fingers are reverent as he runs them lightly from her shoulders to the waistband of the too-big sweats that are riding low on her hips. He doesn't notice he's chewing on his lip as he circles her belly button before he slips the tip of his finger into the shallow indentation.

"Touch yourself," he murmurs after a moment. "You're the sexiest thing in the world, I want to _watch_ you." He takes her pants by the hem and gently tugs. "Touch yourself. Show me _exactly_ what you like."

"Tony!" Pepper's voice is sharp and she blushes from the roots of her hair to her toes. "I can't - I'm not - No. Just...no." But when he skims his thumb in little circles around her belly button again she quivers.

"It's just you and me." His voice is like molten caramel. "Nothing to hide...absolutely nothing to be ashamed of."

"Yes but why choose to fly solo when the real thing's right here?" She sounds more than a little disgruntled

"Who said you were? I'm not going anywhere." He scoots back and takes her sweats with him before he bends down and repeats the actions of his fingers with his mouth and tongue. When she reaches for his head he turns towards her hand and sucks two of her fingers deep into his mouth.

Pepper jerks like she's encountered a live wire, throwing her head back in pleasure. "I only ever come _once_, Tony. I'd rather do it when I've got you inside me."

He pulls back from the fingers he's suckling, raising an eyebrow. "Then how do you explain last night, Ms. 'I only come once?" She stares at him in confusion and he smugly reaches out to take her outstretch and pull straight not just one but two fingers and hold them up in front of her face. "Besides. I asked you pleasure yourself, not make yourself come." He shifts so that he's straddling just one of her legs instead of both. "Please, Pepper. I want to see you. I want to watch as you start to come apart."

"Tony it was probably a fluke..." But she lets her hand drop to her belly.

"Close your eyes." He says in a whisper. "You're in your bedroom at home...there's nobody but you. The lights are low, your favorite music is playing. You've got a cup of really good wine by the side of your bed."

Her breathing starts to even out and her hand creeps lower. Encounters the hair just above the apex of her thighs. He smiles, tightens his grip on her hip a little, somehow aware she needs the ground. "Just let it go, Pepper. Take off the worries of the day and show me what you like."

"Tony?" Her voice trembles a little as do her fingers as they lightly brush against her curls. She turns her face towards the cushions as she bends the knee he's not straddling. The image of her room is held in the forefront of her mind as she ever so delicately brushes the tip of one finger - just the edge of her fingernail really - against her clitoris. She shivers and draws a deep breath before doing it again.

Pepper keeps her touch light, teasing, just barely there and she maintains that pressure until she can feel the breeze cooling skin that's broken out into the lightest coat of sweat. She's breathing heavily and sliding her foot against the cushions. Then she shifts her hips the tiniest bit and starts using just a fraction more pressure.

"You said my name," he murmurs softly, although he's almost loathe to break her concentration. She smiles. And the image of her room changes.

"Yes, well that's because you're usually there when I do this."

She imagines him standing at the foot of her bed, one hand wrapped around the metal frame of her footboard. The other hand cradles a glass of wine. His hair is in disarray and he's dressed as if he's come from the office, except his tie and suit coat are gone, his shirt is unbuttoned, and he's barefoot. His eyes are intent and though he takes a sip of wine as if he's unaffected, she knows better.

As she moves her hand further down, a second finger joins the first and she brushes them over her opening, back to front, in a way that make her hips struggle to rise. "I never do this _alone_, Tony. Not in any meaningful way." And then she gives, or maybe takes, it's hard to tell exactly, short of the fact that she seems to stop fighting. Her muscles tense as her fingers find her entrance, probe in a little then pull back out and then climb back toward to clitoris again. She circles there - first gingerly, then with more pressure than he would have expected could be anything but painful.

She's not hurting though, not by the look on her face.

Instead she looks desperate, like she's striving for water. Like she wants nothing else in the world than permission to come. But the spectral him just waits at the end of the bed, drinking wine and showing no sign of breaking at all short of the budge that's filling the front of his pants. "Sometimes you watch me," she admits a little breathlessly. "Sometimes you help me. Sometimes I pretend it's you touching me." This time she presses her fingers in up to the knuckles. As she moves them in a tight circle she gasps her head falls back. In her mind Tony smirks and finishes the last of his wine. "And I always hate to come because then I have to open my eyes and you're never there."

And then he's _in_ that spectral body, and his form is moving, he's sinking onto the mattress beside her as his lips brush her forehead. And his hand is finding her clit as her fingers continue their rhythm inside of her body. "You can come if you like, Pepper. But you have to keep you eyes open. When you come back down, I want you to be looking at me."

And then he's pressing down hard, like she was, and her hips are spasming with need, her eyes wide open until the moment of release.

And she falls. And he's there to catch her at the bottom.

When the moment passes they're half reclined on the balcony, with the sun pouring down on their bare skin, and the wind from the ocean caressing both of the gently. "Pepper." He strokes her hair back as his eyes devour her face. "You are beautiful." His hips press against her as he gently pulls her hand from between her legs. He kisses her palm and then slowly drags his tongue from the center of her hand to the tips of her fingers. Then he buries his face in her neck and trails wet kisses down to her shoulder.

Tony trembles as he tries to reinforce his words with his touch, as he tries to consume her so that she'll never doubt whether or not they are joined together from here on out. There will be no more disappointment in the face of satisfaction...for either of them.

He'll never have to leave his bed again to head off the inevitable unpleasantness, never have to avoid Pepper's eyes the next day, or her presence entirely if he failed at keeping her out of his thoughts the night before.

They are where they belong. Where, he suspects, they were always intended to be.

"Hold me," she murmurs, and it's no struggle to obey. No effort to settle himself against her atop the mattress, and drowned in the feel of her skin. He all but forgets the erection still between them until she spoons in against his front and shift her hips back deliberately..

"Hmmmm...Stark?" she whispers after a moment.

He tilts his head in silent question.

She looks back over her shoulder, circles her hips to make a point. "Thank you for the object lesson, but for the record, you don't have any clue at all the kind of doghouse you'll be in if you keep resisting the urge to touch _me_."

For a moment he's uncertain, lost between a dream world and the real world. He's holding her in both, but now that his full attention isn't focused on watching her, the dual sensations confuse him. He shakes his head, trying to clear it, and then all he can see is sunlight and Pepper smiling up at him with some intrinsically feminine expression. The curve of her lips and the slant of her eyes capture him and he moves his hips restlessly against hers.

"You helped me," he says, aware that she'd given him a little push when he needed it.

"It's what I _do_." She whispers back whimsically. Then her hips shift and he's sliding inside and her head is arching back at the sensation. And nothing has ever felt so much like everything in the 39 years of his life.

"Oh god, Pepper." He moans her name as he braces himself on his elbows and pulls back a little only to thrust in all the way. And her hips raise and take him even deeper and he moans her name again. He is intensely aware of the woman below him, not only of her body but of the way her mind rubs against his as if his consciousness and hers can somehow mate as well.

And it's all so much, and it's all so little, and he can't help but know that somehow this is only the surface of all that they are. He knows in that moment that he's never going to make it all the way to the bottom of everything that she is. There will always be another layer, another mystery - another joy to be discovered if he can encourage her to let herself be free.

This is going to be his life. This fragile reality, that in some ways that is stronger than anything he's ever know.. And he knows that he's found what he wants and more importantly, what he needs.

"Do that again," he whispers as she hooks her knees around his hips. He withdraws and advances, pressing down as she moves up into him. But it's not the physical motion he's requesting, it's the deeper contact he's been starving for for _years_ now. He wants both, one giving fulfillment to the other just as their bodies move together.

And she does, but only a little, with eyes wide open. "Can't do this…-gasp- often….kind of risky."

And then they're both falling over the edge. Into something so sweet he prays there's never a bottom.


	7. Chapter 8

Pepper is woken up...oddly. It feels like someone is tapping inside her head. Her automatic response is to reach for Tony, but the moment she touches him she knows he's sound asleep. He doesn't even respond to her touch - neither the physical or the psychic. However, the peace she feels coming out of him is soothing; calming. Enough so that she nearly goes back to sleep.

Then she feels that tapping sensation again, and she stirs restlessly. Then a voice sounds, whisper soft, inside her head.

'I have tea and brownies. Minus the hash.' There's a subtle amusement in his voice that is both familiar and at the moment, a little annoying. 'Now come let an old man inside before he melts in this heat.'

Malcolm. She blinks for a moment at the usually unfamiliar act. Her father hasn't tried to speak with her this way since she was a girl of fourteen. All she really remembers of his attempts is that they gave her ferocious headaches for days afterwards sometimes, depending on how much strength he put behind his attempts. 'He finally stopped after the third onset migraine.' Her mother had been disappointed and wanted him to continue, but he had actually put his foot down.

It was one of the few times in her entire childhood she'd seen him actively lose his temper and yell at the woman who'd raised her.

She'd thought at the time that his efforts were forceful, now though, she can _feel_ the strength he has at his disposal, and is amazed by his control because only a portion of it is being used. She wonders if her struggle to maintain _any _control is a sign of inexperience or of weakness on her part.

She also knows she'll probably be finding out within the next couple of hours. 'Can't avoid this forever, Pepper. Even if it does feel like a trip to the principal's office.' "Jarvis, let Malcolm in whenever he comes to the house," Pepper instructs softly as she climbs out of bed and looks around for her clothing. When she finds what's left of the suit she'd been wearing the day before, she drops it back to the ground.

'It looks like they've been through some kind of laundry war zone.' Even wearing Tony's clothing seems like less revealing than putting back on her own crumpled, wrinkled garments. Beside there's something about the smell of them that is actually making her sick to her stomach. 'It's time to get this set dry cleaned. I'll see about going over to my house later today to get some more changes of clothing…'

For some reason that idea just makes her sicker, like entering her own house is somehow dangerous. Right now the thought of leaving these walls is enough to make her want to hyperventilate. It's another thing she's going to have to force herself to ask Malcolm about.

She finds a pair of shorts that have a drawstring and a clean sweatshirt and pulls them on before going back to the bed to check on Tony. She finds the man asleep, with his nose buried in his pillow, lips smacking unhappily. 'He knows I'm gone and it's stressing him out,' some part of her catalogues a bit absently. The rest of her sees that tension and resists the urge to climb straight back into bed. Because she knows a little about bonds at least, and she knows what they are both feeling isn't anything more than latent separation anxiety.

'You're brooding,' comes a soft voice in her head. Malcolm's mind speak is quiet and low, though not as soothing as he probably intends it to be. 'If this is how hard you try to stay disconnected from _everything_ you feel it's no surprised you're so overwhelmed at the moment.'

'Just...stop. Please. I'll be down in a minute.' Hearing his voice in her head is... Well, it's _uncomfortable_. She's not sure if that's because it's unaccustomed to the practice, or if she's just reacting to sympathetic memory. She only knows that where the same type of communication with Tony seems natural, having someone _else_ in her head is enough to make her hackles raise and her stomach start turning summersaults.

She actually feels Malcolm withdraw. 'Fine, but for the record Ginny, I'm not trying to stress you. You're subconsciously screaming like a siren and it's giving me a _headache_.'

His patience is _too_ patient, and Pepper slams down her shields so hard that Tony groans. She reaches out automatically and rests a comforting hand on the back of his neck while she struggles to find her connection to him through her defenses. By the time she locates the tiny gap that she somehow knows is for Tony alone, she's breaking out in a light sweat. However, the sense of accomplishment she feels as she slips just far enough into his dreams to reassure him makes the effort worthwhile.

When she gets downstairs it's to find Malcolm standing in the kitchen looking exasperated. "I didn't say slam your shields up, Pepper, I said I was sorry. I didn't come here to preach or invade you privacy, but I will have to use my gifts if I'm actually going to _help _you."

"And I asked you to knock it off. I don't _like_ having other people in my head." She pulls plates from one cabinet and tea cups from another. "You're my father, but that doesn't give you permission to just intrude on me whenever you want. You should understand how it feels to have your mind as your last place of refuge. If you want to talk to me, you can damn well use _words_."

Malcolm's eyes narrow in what is obviously frustration, and yet his mind remains gentle and non-confrontational. "Yes, I _do_ understand needing a refuge, and I have one. You on the other hand _don't_." The old man sighs and takes a plate from her, cutting off a generous wedge of brownie and sitting down at the table. "Also, yes: I am your father, but considering that you've apparently known for _years_ and never brought it up, you don't get to use it as an excuse not to listen to me _now _just because it's convenient for you."

She drops her head at that comment because he's right and she_ knows _it, and once again his words have managed to fill her with shame. Malcolm seems to see this, because he sighs and reaches out to carefully take her hand. "Look, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard. But I'm not your enemy Pepper, and I never will be." He sighs and takes another bite of brownie. "For the record it's _not_ in my nature to deliver an ass kicking unless somebody _makes_ me. But you almost _died_ yesterday and that puts this all at a different level."

Malcolm shakes his head. "I will play hardball on this if I have to, so for God's sake Pepper, _please_ don't make me."

Pepper knows from her own inner fragility that he's right, but that state only makes her all the more reluctant to let _anyone_ in. It's not like they're talking about performing surgery or something. They're talking about what boils down to essentially manipulating who she is at her very core. And she's really not sure she'd willingly let anyone that far in. Even Tony wouldn't have the option, if she had a _choice_ about that.

"I don't want you coming in uninvited," Pepper says firmly, driven by the same sense of self-preservation that had driven her into this state in the first place. "You _ask _from now on. And I'll try to be flexible. But don't treat me like an idiot and learn to respect my boundaries." Then she looks him right in the eye. "Or I'll kick back even harder, and I don't know for sure, but I suspect I'm close to an equal match for you these days."

Malcolm's jaw twitches, but he nods just a little. "In power yes, in training no. I'll try and stay low key as long as you try and stay open. First though _please_ let me help you because I can feel your strength draining...and Pepper, it _hurts _watching you suffer when it's totally unnecessary."

His second deliberate use of her work nickname distracts her momentarily. "Mal you are welcome to call me 'Ginny.' I've never objected to the name."

It just isn't her very often anymore. Well, at least not really.

The man in front of her chuckles. 'I'm not talking to 'Ginny.' I'm talking to the person who's actually in charge these days, and the name she answers to is Pepper."

"What are you talking about?" Pepper asks in confusion as she sits down at the kitchen table without a single thought towards the use it'd been put to earlier in the day. She's too distracted. Malcolm's right about the effort it takes to keep herself so tightly closed off and the toll it's taking on her, though she's surprised by how much of it is that with her shields drawn tightly it's hard to know how Tony is. She hasn't realized until this moment how much she _actually_ monitors him throughout the day.

Reluctantly, she lets the shields go until she's left with the day to day barrier that's more instinct than a conscious decision to keep. Without it she'd be overwhelmed by the people she comes into contact with daily. Though she isn't really sure if it's some kind of psychic block or just a natural reserve.

Malcolm whistles under his breath. "Okay. Should have seen this one coming. His presence actually helps to stabilize your shields. Let me guess, are you having issues with the idea of getting more than one hundred feet away from him at the moment?"

Pepper looks at him dourly, doing her best to suppress a bolt of shock. "Okay, rule number two: if you want me to cooperate you will stop talking, acting or even looking so damn cryptic all the time. It's insulting and it pisses me off, because if I wanted to see a soothsayer I'd go to the fair and shell out fifty dollars to have someone ooh and ahh all over me."

Malcolm sighs at that. "You're going to have to stop doing that you know, if we're going to make any progress."

"Doing _what_?!" she growls back. "What did I just _say_ about not being cryptic?!"

The man leans a little closer. "When I said that you need to stop it, I was referring to the way you keep devaluing all psychic gifts by comparing them to freak shows because they make you uncomfortable." He straightens back up in his chair. "And I'm calling you Pepper because it's the name that Tony gave you and the one you think of yourself as now." His lips actually smirk. "Unless you're going to tell me that internally you still think of yourself as Ginny?"

He was right and Pepper knew it. It was one of the things she'd accepted first in order to keep her job. In her early days on the job she'd done her best to get him to use her real name, but she'd been unable to match Tony's stubborn tenacity. Eventually she'd made the name her own, putting it on like a suit of armor every time she went to war on his behalf. Most people these days knew and respected the 'infamous Pepper Potts.'

Virtually none of them had ever met 'Ginny.'

"I compare them to freak shows because most of the time that's the only use I see them used for," Pepper mutters. "Even Mom went through her fortune telling phase at one point. She dragged us both to one every other week."

"Your mother was a fruitcake." Malcolm informs her candidly. "She's half the reason you're in this mess. She's the only reason you're untrained…" Something in Pepper snaps to hear that said of a woman who's been dead and buried more than fifteen years.

"Yeah well, you get the other half of the blame, because you're the idiot who fucked her before you took the time to know her, and you certainly didn't bother to stick around after. She's _gone_ and she was my _mother_. Do you _really _think bad-mouthing her is a good place to begin with me?"

"I'm only telling the truth, which is necessary if we're ever going to fix this mess. _Yes -_ I slept with you mom and then I left her. It was the late seventies, Pepper," Malcolm informs her baldly. "And we were both skunked on hash and wine the night you were conceived. Still you exist because of that, so I can't see it as a completely bad thing."

"You _hurt_ her every time you came and left. How was that possibly good for _any_ of us?" Pepper snaps.

"Yeah well, Pepper, I hate to break it to you, but it was pretty much mutual in terms of the agony. Here's a hint, Virginia, it wasn't my idea to have me remain 'Uncle Malcolm.'" The brunette's hand tightens hard in his lap. "I _loved_ your mom. I wanted to _marry_ her. It wasn't me who busted us up it was _her_. She just couldn't accept the world as it was in _reality_…"

"What do you mean, Mom wasn't 'accepting?'" Pepper cuts him off. "Mom was the most open minded person I've ever _met_ - and I _know_ she loved you."

Malcolm interrupts right back. "Yes she did. But she refused to believe that just being what she actually _was_ could ever be good enough for me." Malcolm groans, and Pepper can see regret in his face. "This is not the way that I've wanted to deal with this subject...I've made a point not to badmouth her in front of you."

The man rubs his forehead and suddenly looks his almost fifty eight years. "It's just…Your mom did have her gifts, Pepper. They weren't as flashy as mine. But she was a _brilliant_ artist who could have done so much _more_ if she'd focused on it wholeheartedly instead of considering it just an unimportant hobby…"

Malcolm dropped his hand from his forehead and met her gaze directly. "I never wanted anything more than the woman I first met..." He shakes his head. "But she got it into her head that she had to be 'more' - and that if she wasn't, that meant she'd eventually lose me." Malcolm rolls his eyes. "What ended up happening was exactly the _opposite_. I lost her and you _both_ to her damned sense of inadequacy."

That sickened feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach again. Though this time it wasn't her own emotions alone - her father's were in there as well. Malcolm must have been unaware his own shields were slipping, because now she is fighting the urge to get up and hug the shit out of him. Malcolm draws a deep breathe before he finishes. "And that pisses me off, Pepper. It's been more than thirty years and I can barely breathe when I think about it. I loved her and there was nothing I could do to fix it."

"Malcolm, you're an _empath_. Why didn't you just...?" Pepper shakes her head then buries her face in her hands. "You can _make_ people see the truth, Malcolm. Why didn't you just make _her_?" Because her life would have been very different if she'd had two parents, if there'd been someone else in the house to balance out her mother's flightiness, so she didn't have to.

"If only things were that easy. She was supposed to be _my_ bonded, Pepper. _My gifts never worked effectively on her._" The words are half laughed and half whimpered, an admission that leaves him gutted and leaves her completely out of breath because it means that her father has lived the last three weeks of her life for going on thirty-four _years_.

"How did she fight it?" Pepper whispers. "How _could_ she fight it?" The mother she remembers had showed none of the signs that Pepper herself had experienced in the last weeks. "And how could either of you bear it when you came to visit?" She remembers how hard it'd been not to rush to Tony's side the moment he stepped off the plane the day he returned to the US. How she'd distracted herself by biting her lip and digging her nails into her hands. And that had been _before_ they'd had sex.

If for some reason, she and Tony needed to separate for a long period of time now, she's absolutely certain that the first thing they'll do when reunited is fall on each other without a single thought to their surroundings.

Yet Malcolm and her mother had been at best incidental lovers who had almost never even shared a bedroom to sleep in. Though come to think of it they'd always already been there and freshly showered when she came home and found he'd come to visit.

Before she can be totally disgusted by that realization, her father continues, stopping the thought in it's tracks. "Your mother wasn't the empath, Pepper. _I_ was the one who took the worst of it. And I bore it by getting _high_...at least until I found somebody in Africa willing to sever the bond. Why do you think you were even born, Pepper? Sometimes birth control _fails_."

He shrugs, "There is a _reason _I only visited sporadically. Even after a severing ceremony that nearly _killed me _the connection was _constantly_ trying to repair itself. "

"You know someone who can sever bonds?" The question slips out before Pepper can stop it and she winces, not needing to imagine Tony's reaction if he had overheard her. He'd made it pretty clear that backing out was no longer an option he was going to let her consider.

"I _knew_ someone yes. She died fifteen years ago. The only person left with that skill who has the power to see it through is the person talking to you." Malcolm's eyes narrow in her general direction. "And if I agreed to attempt that kind of thing it would only be _after_ you and Anthony both got a close up and personal empathic playback of what it did to your mother and I. Because it's not something I'd put you through without knowing and accepting _all_ the possible consequences."

Which meant it wasn't going to happen. Because Tony would never risk her life, and she'd never risk his, which made it the ultimate catch twenty-two. She's searching back through her memory now, looking at everything she's ever known about her mother except now she is finally starting to _understand_ it.

The woman hadn't been just determined to increase her power, she'd been _desperate_. Perhaps because she'd honestly believed it could bring them all back together again. That it could make them all _whole_. 'Or maybe it was justification…a way to accept that she'd massacred her life.' Because if she couldn't be more than she'd been then it was all for nothing. The woman had destroyed herself and the man she loved because she'd never been able to accept what she was.

She'd also crippled her daughter in ways Pepper was only beginning to recognize.

That knowledge was chilling. It actually made her shudder. "I didn't mean it. Not really. I _can't_ be without him anymore." And she can't. But she's still struggling to cope with everything a mature bond entails. "I don't think I understand one thing, Malcolm: Tony's not empathic, but he was feeling our bond before it was...realized." If that was the right term. "Why are we different than you and Mom in that? Are all bonds different?"

"You both have much greater power than your mother and I did...and you were never trained to cope with you empathy effectively. And by the way: _like hell _your lover's not empathic!"

Pepper's eyes widen in disbelief and Malcolm snickers, trying to decide whether to cushion the next blow or just deliver it bluntly. "Just because he's a flicker of flame next to your floodlight doesn't mean he's _deficient_, Pepper. He's just untrained and thus far really, really lucky."

Then the older man sits back and crosses his fingers, seeing the confusion build and waiting for the inevitable denial. Pepper looks at Malcolm through her fingers. "Like _hell_ he's empathic," she says back when she finds the ability to speak again. "No one who causes the chaos he does can possibly _be _empathic. We don't go through that much _Excedrin_ in this house for that."

"Why do you think that he _causes_ so much chaos? Because I'll tell you right now that his nature isn't meant to be destructive, it's meant to orchestrate _change_." He shakes his head, "And for the record, I think you'll find that his lack of need for Excedrin is explained by the fact that you've been both buffering and grounding him for _years_ now."

Malcolm shrugs. "As for his attitude - input is mostly output. To risk a misquote, 'what one seeks one often finds.' He's probably got a bad habit of mimicking or satirizing the attitudes of everyone around him. I'm guessing that if you put him in a isolated spot though, where he doesn't subconsciously read other people and react accordingly, what results is pretty much who he really _is_ with all the garbage filtered out."

Pepper just stares at Malcolm because he's just described Tony's public face versus Tony when he's buried up to his neck in engine parts and axel grease in his garage. He's known Tony less than forty eight hours and accurately summed up his entire basic personality. It also explains all of _her _headaches. She wonders if it also explains how easily women have always fallen into Tony's bed.

"Oh god my head hurts," is all she says in reply. Her hands are starting to shake a little as well, though she's barely processing that consciously. Instead she's filtering back through every press conference and every public appearance, and she's re-evaluating. She's seeing every moment he's gone from Tony the charming to Tony the _ass_ in the space of a heartbeat. How many people had he slept with who now openly _despise_ him? How often has she seen him simply _shut down _as if the world doesn't matter?

'Defense mechanism,' she realizes after a moment. 'Fight or flight and sometimes both except managed internally.' She wants to go upstairs and fuck the subtle self-loathing out of his head almost as badly as she wants to beat the crap out of the next reporter who as much as _looks_ at him funny. "God, I never even _suspected_..." She closes her eyes as she rubs at her head. If she had, she would have been _much _more careful around him. But she hadn't been, and the result is that for the last nine years she's essentially been throwing herself at him every chance she got. No wonder she's the only person who's ever been able to manage him. She'd been speaking his language _all this time_.

Malcolm shrugs. "Don't blame yourself, Pepper. You're mostly untrained yourself. Call it blind serendipity...you both got exactly what you needed." Then amused grey green eyes look into hers for a minute. "You do realize that if you let things work the way they should, this link will stop hurting and _balance_ both of you. It's why the thing formed in the first place."

Pepper trembles and shakes her head in a jerky movement. "I..." Her voice is hoarse and she has to clear her throat. "It's hard to think kindly of _anything_ that's caused as much trouble as this bond. I didn't even know it was _there_ until six months ago." The look in Malcolm's eyes is puzzled, like he has no clue what she's talking about. "Tony was in Afghanistan," she whispers in explanation. "He was kidnapped by terrorists. He was hurt, and needed...surgery. And I went through all of it with him." Just remembering it brings the pain flooding back. "For three months I thought I was going crazy...or that the alternate visions of him either alive or dead were going to drive me crazy."

The shock in the other man's eyes is strong and then _incredulous_. "My god...why didn't you call up Merilee? Andrew? _Me_?!"

'Because I couldn't bring myself to admit it was happening,' something whispers in her head. 'Because Mom was a _ditz_ and I had to stay grounded or we both would have fallen...'

"I couldn't...I didn't understand what was happening." The man across from her narrows his eyes. "I didn't _want_ to admit what was happening," she self corrects. "Because Tony is the freak and super-genius in this relationship. Not me. I was already enough of a nerd without admitting to being the emotional equivalent of a lighting rod." The last words are nearly wailed in embarrassed disbelief.

Then before she can say another word strong arms are lifting her up and out of her chair. "What in _hell_ are you doing?" Tony glares at Malcolm accusingly.

"I'm fine." Their link is wide open and Pepper knows her lover has _never_ been this angry. She twists to wrap her arms around Tony, instinctively going for the quickest way to center and ground him. She realizes instinctively he's reacting to her distress as if she's under some kind of _physical_ attack. "Malcolm just didn't understand why I resisted the bond so strongly. He didn't understand _I_ didn't even know about it until you were abducted. He's not hurting me. It's just...the remembering."

"Then _stop _– you're overstressed enough already." Tony growls at the man across the table, "If this is your version of 'teaching' then you can fucking get out!"

Malcolm raises his hands in surrender. "The psychic boils have to be lanced before her whole mind turns _septic_. This shit is what got her into that room you hate so much. Back off and let me do my _job_."

Pepper ignores Malcolm for the time being, because he's right and the prospect of dredging up all the gunk that's mired her down is terrifying. But Tony comes first - he _has _to come first, or she's afraid that he's going to literally attack Malcolm. She tightens her arms around him and lets her body relax into his, which only makes the shivers racing through her more apparent. "It's better now that you're here. Remembering...seeing it all again is _too much _without you here. That's why the nightmares have been so awful."

She knows what losing him feels like, and every time she watches him die, that feeling comes back. Without being able to touch his skin and feel him, there's been nothing to short circuit the fear. It'd been like a cloudy day without a sun strong enough to break through the gloom. "Nightmares?" Malcolm asks. "Are these the ones from when he was abducted?" He's remaining absolutely still with his eyes still fixed on Tony.

Pepper shakes her head, then shrugs. "Half the time yes, the other half of the time they're about his upcoming missions."

Tony reacts to that information like it's a lightening strike. His arms tighten around her convulsively, and then he's spinning her around. "How often?" he demands, holding her in place with his hands on his shoulders.

"Dreams or foresight, Ginny?" Malcolm demands at the same time, and Pepper buries her head in Tony's shoulder.

"I don't know," Pepper admits to Malcolm softly. "About sixty to seventy percent of them just...well they simply feel _true_." To Tony she speaks with a whispered hush. "Until last night? I had them four or five nights a week."

The room goes eerily, chillingly silent. Malcolm doesn't say a word. Tony is shaking and she can feel his agonized disbelief pouring down through the link as he processes that new information. "My god," Malcolm whispers at last. "At that rate how have you not gone absolutely _crazy_?!"

She actually laughs, though it closely resembles a cry of pain. "What makes you think I _haven't_?" Her hands are running up and down Tony's arms without direction from her. His pain is swamping her and she has to erect several layers of shields before she can even take a full breath. Only then can she start to analyze what she's getting from him. "You honestly had no idea what I was talking about, did you?" she asks him softly. "You didn't understand why 'a few dreams' would make me so set against becoming even closer to you."

Tony isn't looking at her, he's looking at Malcolm. "You have to tell me how to break the bond...how to _fix this_." He's nearly bending them in half trying not to knock them both out with the indescribable pain. The very _idea _sends the link into flames, as if it's a sentient being and the suggestion has left it threatened or made it irrationally angry. Though, the heat going through the link has nothing on the instinctive flare of temper Pepper feels at the suggestion. The moment the link flares to life she drops into it without even the suggestion of control and feeds her outrage into it and the debilitating pain of even the thought of being permanently separated.

Her mind grabs his and her consciousness sinks its hooks into his until there's little distinction between Pepper and Tony. And then she just says, "_No_."

This is not going to happen. They'd _finished _this argument last night.

"Pepper..." he whispers in agony. "You're hurting because of me. I can't keep doing that to you now that I know."

"She's hurting because she's _untrained_." Malcolm interjects, "And because she delayed getting help for so long she's all but _destroyed_ her psychic reserves. Foresight does not have to be this painful; the bond can help buffer some of the damage." He sighs and runs a hand back through the hair sliding out of it's ponytail. "I can even teach you to help shield her from her dreams when she sleeps. But only if the two of you will _let me_."

"You can't leave me, Tony. And even if you did we wouldn't be any better off." She sinks her psychic hooks deeper into him. "It wouldn't stop either of us from hurting. It'd mean living like the last three weeks for the rest of our lives." Across from her Malcolm flinches, and Pepper almost regrets the honesty. Tony though is just trying to center himself and find a safe release valve to siphon off the latent anxiety. He latches on to Malcolm's words like a lifeline.

"I can stop her gifts? What exactly do you mean?"

"Not stop them, just help regulate them." Malcolm says tiredly. "Pepper, let Tony go. You're overwhelming the poor guy and hampering his ability to think." That causes Pepper to groan and take several steps back. Tony actually shivers from the absence of contact.

"You said I can help her." The engineer picks the words more carefully this time.

"If she can buffer you, than you can buffer her. Not as effectively and not for quite as long, but it will help at least a little. Right now I'd suggest we start with that because if we do that it should stop the nightmares for at least a couple of nights."

"I didn't dream last night." Pepper acknowledges quietly. Or if she had, they had all been good. If it weren't for the emotional stress of the day, she'd have had to say she was actually feeling good.

"Then he's already doing it subconsciously. And it probably helps that you're in the same bed. Skin on skin contact works for a reason; it's like talking to a person through a telephone instead of just screaming bloody murder across a giant room."

Pepper nods, then turns as she feels a startled thought from Tony down the link.

"Could it also be that now that it's been acknowledged, the bond isn't...well, trying as hard to get her attention?" Tony sounds uncomfortable, and looks a little awkward, but Pepper can see the gears turning in his head. "I mean, energy when it has no place to go simply builds up, and builds up, and builds up until it forces its way out in some fashion. Couldn't that have been the case here? And the weakest place for it to get through would have been her fears for my safety. If it wanted completion, it would have worked through the most likely way to make her comply. And through her, me."

Malcolm pauses a moment. "Damn you're going to be handy. It's not often we find a person with a gift for sheer diagnostics." He looks at Pepper. "Only you can tell me if he is right about that theory though."

Pepper stares at the other man in disbelief. "You're asking me to confirm?! You're supposed to be the specialist, why are you asking me?"

Malcolm rolls his eyes. "Pepper, this isn't a pure science. It's an _art_, and some things simply come down to instinct."

Which is part of the problem, Pepper realizes after a moment. Both her father and her lover live on instinct above all else. She on the other hand doesn't even acknowledge it most days.

"I don't know." She snaps at him irritably. "It's not like I've had any kind of baseline to compare with."

"Does is_ feel _like he's telling the truth?" Malcolm asks her, gaze sharpening insistently.

"It feels..." Pepper pauses because what she feels makes her sound like a lunatic. "It feels like whatever there is between us has a life of it's own that is only partially _controlled_ by us. It feels like it wants us to be together and is going to do what it has to in order for us to get there, and now that we are finally bending to the pressure it's not going to just let us go." She looks over at Tony and the look on his face is indescribable. She reaches out and takes his hand. "'Bond' is a good word for it, because I feel like we really are _trapped_ in some way that's somehow beyond either of us." She says it all in a rush and to her own ears she sounds unhappy and just a little disbelieving.

Malcolm smiles a little, in a way that's acknowledging and sad. "Then welcome to the big leagues, where you're only partly in charge of your own lives anymore." He shrugs. "I won't say it's always pleasant, but it is one hell of a ride." Pepper can't help the shot of pain that goes through her like a toothache, and she can't entirely shield it from Tony. This time he doesn't get angry, he just turns his full attention on her and she can feel his fumbling attempts to feel out why she's distressed.

"We'll talk about it later," she mumbles as she carefully closes herself off. She's stronger than him and she's not afraid of using that strength to give herself the space she needs. Right now, even having Tony in on her thoughts is too much for her to handle.

She's just so tired of the loss of control, and she's not sure she can handle how well he's probably accepting the idea.

Tony doesn't know this though. He only knows that she's hurting. "How do I shield her?" he asks Malcolm after a moment. "When I'm awake and we're not going to get to be naked anytime soon."

"Tony!" She blushes from her toes to the roots of her hair. Malcolm, bless his heart doesn't laugh. Which is probably fortunate because if he had she would have had to kill him. Her limits are strained already from too many sudden shocks and invasions of her long-held privacy.

"It's all right, Pepper. Both of you close your eyes." Tony obeys immediately but Pepper is more hesitant to comply.

Malcolm sighs and reaches out with his mind, sending a wave a reassurance toward her. "I'm not going to touch you - you two can do this on your own with a simple talk-through, but it's _easier_ for beginners if you cut down on the distractions. Close your eyes Virginia, and for once just_ try _and trust me."

Maybe it's his facial expression, maybe it's his tone. Maybe it's the use of her full name, which she hasn't heard him speak since her mother's funeral. Maybe it's even Tony who's standing less than three feet away with only one eyelid cracked open. 'Scared of the dark, Potts?' Tony's voice in her head is whimsical. She snorts and shuts her eyes in disbelief. Something of this is familiar, barely remembered from a few of Malcolm's visits early in her childhood. Pepper reaches behind her and pushes herself up to sit on the counter. Then she brings her hands to rest in her lap and she tries to remember what's supposed to happen next. It was so long ago, and they're dealing with concepts she'd barely understood then. And since this had almost always happened when she'd been in the midst of a temper tantrum, she remembers the anger more clearly than the directions Malcolm had given her long ago.

Something about...self monitoring, she thinks, though that's an adult term that she applies to it. It's certainly not how it'd been explained to her then.

Malcolm's voice is low and soothing. A register he rarely uses, because it is all but impossible to ignore. "Okay, now the two of you need to imagine your bond - like that string of light between your bodies that you visualized earlier, Tony."

Pepper raises an eyebrow at that but complies after a moment, shocked at how easily the image comes this time. Between her and Tony lies a strong twine of energy - millions of threads in alternating red and green colors - appears. She gasps a little at the sheer beauty of the weave that she is seeing.

"I can see it." Tony admits to Malcolm. "Same as before...well not the same exactly, this time it's a chord yes, but of two distinct colors."

"Red and green." Pepper supplies the additional information before her father can ask, reaching out with a finger to touch the bond gingerly. When she does it's like standing in the warm sun. She can swear her heart rate actually drops, and her breathing deepens slightly.

"Okay then," Malcolm continues softly. "I want you to both reach out and grab the bond and envision yourself standing in an empty white room. But listen carefully...Pepper, remember how you used to like Star Trek? I want you to think of the energy screens they have around their ships. And when you get inside I want you both to picture one in your head. That's going to embody your personal shielding."

She obeys and is shocked when she finds them standing face to face in a white room with what looks like a force field of green energy just above her skin. 'Well, this never happened in Star Trek,' she thinks as she holds up her arm for closer examination. Unless one considered this a more advanced form of the force fields that the Borg threw up...

God, she is _such_ a geek. Pepper jerks her attention back to what Malcolm is trying to show them. She studies the green film-like light covering her skin, then studies the one around Tony. For some reason, his is more...boxy. He smiles at her mischievously. 'You're not the only one who watched a little Next Generation, Potts.' Then the shield contracts so that it looks more like hers. Except the colors are different. His is a brownish green. Puzzled, Pepper steps closer and examines the glow around him. Up close she can see that there's red light dancing under green; Tony's actually covered by his own shield and her own. And since green is the dominant color, then hers must be stronger than his.

What bothers her is that she doesn't know if it's always been this way, or if this is just some kind of natural defense she threw up to protect him. Or if it's an extension of her need to protect herself, since he's now an intimate part of who she is.

Tony is studying the shielding himself, and after a moment he starts to look a little concerned. "Uhm, Pepper...may I suggest you stop stretching yourself quite this thin when you can barely cover yourself."

He's right, she realizes, after another moment. Closer inspection of her own shields show constant slight permutations of the color. It's like an over-stretched fabric that's letting to much light through to the skin right below.

'No wonder I'm tired,' she acknowledges to herself. Still, "I...I'm not sure that's a good idea. I don't know how long I've been doing this Tony. It might leave you at risk if I try and change it."

"And leaves _you_ at risk to keep it like this. You're too fragile, Pepper. You need the protection more than I do right now. Trust me on this. I know a little bit about armor." His smile is lopsided. "Just pull back enough so that you're completely protected, for a little while at least."

So she does. She mentally draw the shielding back. The effect is immediate, and a little stunning actually. Far from the bright but thin shield of before, Tony's own shields actually expand as her own slip back to wrap more thickly around her. She doesn't know if that's because it naturally adjusts or if she's somehow been unconsciously suppressing his ability to protect himself.. "Mal...can a bondmate impair a partner's ability to shield...?" She asks the question very carefully.

Malcolm's voice echoes back, "No. But it's not unusual after an initial cementing of a bond for certain abilities to increase in power a significant amount."

"So the stronger I am, the stronger Tony can be?" If nothing else, it's a excellent reason for her to work on taking care of herself.

"Not exactly. He will hit natural limits to his gifts, but you're both changing, so those limits will be different than they used to be. You'll both have brand new base lines." Then Malcolm's voice turns businesslike. "Stark, do I need to tell you how to shield her or have you already figured out the process? Shielding her from nightmares will basically just involve helping her tighten her shield to the point that nothing gets through but you. You won't be able to constantly do it, but you can manage it occasionally if she's becoming critically short on sleep."

"I think I get it." Tony reaches out to hold her without actually moving. It's...hard. It feels like trying to use muscles that have atrophied. But there are results. The hue of Pepper's shields dim a little as some of his red flows into them. But all too soon he knows that he's hit his limit. He feels it; it's the sensation of knowing that one more turn of the screw will crack whatever it's supposed to be holding together.

"Tony, _stop_," Pepper gasps, at the same precise moment he feels the call to pull back.

And he does, but with obvious frustration. "I thought you said I could shield her, Malcolm...that did virtually _nothing_."

"Says who?" Pepper whispers in shock. "You obviously didn't feel it the way that I just did." Then her voice softens. "It felt...good. Like being wrapped in a blanket with you in front of a fire. Except the blanket was bulletproof."

He blinks at that particular analogy. Then smirks "So - _force fields_, Pepper? How much geek-TV did you _watch_ as a kid?"

"Touchy subject, remember, Stark?" And besides...it wasn't really a question of how much she'd watched as a kid...since Star Trek in it's many variations had gotten her well into her twenties, and then there'd been shows like Battle Star Galatica, and Firefly, and Dr. Who... "Besides, who are you kidding? You know what Borg shields look like. Hell you probably tried to build them at some point..." She sees a wry look on his face she takes as confirmation. "Hmmm...Maybe I ought to be looking into the old Classic uniforms if I want to seduce you some night."

"These are not Borg style shields, Pepper. They are Babylon Five White Stars maybe..." Then he waggles his eyebrows... "Hmm... The outfit has possibilities. You kinda _are_ Deanna Troi."

"Babylon Five is the equivalent of Gene Roddenberry's bastard lovechild," Pepper says scornfully, though there's a heavy dose of teasing in her voice. "You obviously aren't a purist."

"Hey! Deep Space Nine was a rip off from J Michael Straczynski. Besides, can we say better tech and hotter babes? Not to mention way better CGI."

"DS9 tackled way more tough, social issues -" she starts, but she's interrupted by a mental shake from Malcolm. From the look on Tony's face she can see he felt it too.

The older man snorts and speaks aloud. "You do realize you're saying all this _out loud_. And I'm not sure who the more pathetic geek is.'

"Me," they both say simultaneously, then scowl at each other and prepare to debate the point.

Malcolm snorts again. "Let's just say you're well matched and leave it at that. Pepper, I want you to drop _all_ your shields."

-end part-


	8. Chapter 9

"What? No." Pepper shakes her head. "Are you crazy? I'm barely holding myself together as it is."

"I know, Pepper. That's the point. I suspect that what happened when Tony was abducted, was that he reached a point where he _couldn't shield _any longer. And even though you only had a half-formed link then, it was a _strong_ half-formed link. And it was enough for your unconscious mind to step in and do it's best to protect him from what was happening. Yes, it meant that you experienced everything he did, which at the time meant sharing his suffering. Though I have theories about that too. But whatever you did probably kept him alive. Right now though, you're facing a situation where the threat isn't external. It's _internal, _and you hold all the cards. That puts Tony at a disadvantage should something happen to you again. I want -"

"_No_," she says flatly, knowing where he's going with this. She loves Tony, and she trusts him, but there's no way she's going to subject him to the full force of the emotions still churning inside of her. It's bad enough with the damage she's _already_ caused to his psyche. She's _not_ causing more if she can possibly prevent it. Besides...she's scared to let anyone know her that well, to be that intimate with anyone. If he knows her as well as she knows herself, then what defenses will she have left against _him_?

She needs a certain distance in her life. If she gives it up she'll have nothing left to stabilize her footing.

"Pepper, this is not a suggestion. Remember what I told you about imbalance? Well this is _exactly_ what I was referring to. You need to drop your shields and let the damn bond reboot. It's the only way to get things to reload the way they should have the first time around."

"No," she says again, though this time it's more of a request for mercy than a denial. What if Tony doesn't _like_ her once he knows her that well? It's possible. As she knows now, their bond doesn't guarantee love, just connection. "I'm not a computer. This bond is just going to have to be happy with what it has."

"Pepper..." Tony's voice is absolutely serious - she turns to look at him, and sees the conflict in his eyes. He reaches for her hand in the psychic plane and the touch of their minds makes her shudder a little with the intensity of sensation. "I don't like to push you, but your father has been right about everything else thus far." He's staring at her like he's seeing her _thoughts_, and for a terrible moment, she wonders if he actually is. "You know I'd never intentionally hurt you." She closes her eyes, because now he's the one that sounds hurt and scared and it's just so _unfair_.

"Give me a moment." She has to drop his hand and turn her back on him as she considers.

Yes, she loves him. Yes, she trusts him. But what this boils down to is trusting him not just to love her but to accept her as well. And he will have to do this despite differences, despite things in her character that he doesn't or might not like. And she will have to let him see her fears, which might hurt his feelings no matter what because she can't help the things she fears irrationally. That's what _makes_ them irrational.

But he's Tony, and he's never turned away from her when she's needed him. At least not in her small amount of experience.

And that's the only thing she really needs to know, because history can't afford to be repeated. She can't do it to herself and she won't do it to Tony. Still, there has to be some common ground in this somewhere… "Fine. But _only_ Tony. I'm serious Malcolm. I love you, but I am _not_ an open book. We're talking about sharing things most couples probably never do." Because by dropping her shields she's opening herself up to him completely. It probably won't take more than a split second to raise them again if she feels threatened, but she doesn't want to know what he can learn about her in that split second.

She tries not to think about the things she learned about him in those agonizing hours she'd shared with him while he was gone. It was essentially stolen knowledge, even if the physical pain had been a buffer against her.

"Malcolm, will it endanger us if I do the same? Drop my shields, I mean. Equal for equal?" Tony suddenly asks.

"Tony!" She spins back around to face him.

He refuses to drop her gaze. "Why would I ask you to do something, Pepper, that I _wouldn't_ do myself?"

"One of us has to be in _control_," she almost shouts. She doesn't know why, just that it's the truth. The way she wants what he is offering is reason enough to say no in her opinion. What he's talking about is a complete merging of themselves. And she doesn't know about him, but she knows that if they join that way in the shape they're in now, she'd probably be unable to force herself back to the physical world.

So she straightens her shoulders and speaks with deliberation. "If you want to put us on equal ground, then I can accept that. But only if we take turns," she stresses. "_One at a time_."

Tony sighs, "Right now, Pepper, you being _this_ scared of something probably just means that it's the best route to take. But if you're _that_ insistent..." Tony reaches out and grips her forearms. "I give you my word that we'll do this your way." His hands tighten a little. "I'll even give you one better. If you're too exhausted to handle this now than we can pause awhile and try and let you get some rest before we do this."

She wants to weep at the offer every bit as much as she wants to take it. But giving herself time to pause means giving her more time to panic. "Whether or not I'm tired is not the issue here, Tony. Don't you understand? By dropping my shields all the way and allowing you to provide them, I'm open to you. _Completely_. There's not a part of me you won't be able to see if you just look."

He pulls her into his arms. "I know that, Pepper. Why do you think I offered reciprocation? It's a risk for both of us, but if this is going to work, we can't do anything less." He reaches out and kisses her forehead. "I_ felt _you in Afghanistan. I may not have known what it was that I was dealing with, but I still felt your love for me. I want to be that kind of tether for you as well, to be more than the weight around your neck. But I can only do so if you're willing to trust me."

"I didn't see as much as you might think, Tony. I was kinda distracted at the time." Pepper bites her lip then finally shakes her head. "If we're going to do this, then let's do it while we're supervised. I don't know what might happen if we screw this up when there's not someone around to save us."

She hesitates one second longer before asking Malcolm, "This isn't going to produce any...um, embarrassing physical reactions, is it?" Because she remembers Tony's reaction to the light brush of mind on mind that she allowed before. And if their bodies are going to get out of control, then she wants to move this part behind closed doors.

"I'm not entirely certain. I would suggest you find some privacy. I can stay several floors away and still know if there's trouble." Malcolm's voice is half neutral and half pained in the way only a father discussing his daughter's sex life can be. She groans and opens her eyes in the physical world. This is just what she needs; her father looking on while she put herself in a potentially compromising situation. Though he probably already knows _exactly_ how compromised she is.

"Tony, we're moving to another room."

Malcolm nods in agreement. "I'll be out by the edge of the cliff shielding. I assume you will _call _if you need me."

Pepper feels more than a little miserable as she leads Tony from the kitchen, but she stalls out in the living room. It feels ridiculous to be going back to the bedroom _again_. "I hate being clueless," she whispers to herself as Tony comes up behind her. "I'm sorry this is turning into such a mess..."

Tony's reaction is pretty much what she expects. He wraps her into a giant bear hug from behind. "You're a _genius_ at coping with messes." Then his lips press into the side of her neck. "I _love _you. I wish that was enough to relieve all your fear." He shakes his head. "You're just going to have to have to learn to trust me."

"I do trust you," she says with a tiny whimper. She does - she thought he knew that much at least.

"You're trying to," he answers back. "But some things you just don't really master until you've had lots of practice."

If only he knew how much practice she's had at trusting personalities like his… Well, he'd appreciate the effort needed not to laugh at his unintentional irony. What she's mastered is seeking out the limits of just how much responsibility she can entrust to him and when he's been given too much and is going to let something go in favor of a more interesting project. And she doesn't blame him because she understands that they're not wired the same way. It's not his fault or her fault. It's just the way things are.

Besides, she knows how much he loves her, and that does a lot to weigh things in his favor when all is said and done.

"Couch," is what she says to him in return. "Can we at least pretend that we can get through this without getting each other naked?"

He tilts his head, studies he a moment inquisitively. "Pepper, so what if we have to be? I don't see the problem." He chews on his lip a moment, looking as if he's afraid his confusion is going to offend her, like he's failing to understand something so vital to who she is. "It's just...you're talking like it's dirty. What in hell is wrong with skin on skin? I mean, I love you and it offers comfort. There's so little of that for either of us right now, so why are you treating it like some kind of sin?"

"Can't we do anything important anymore without also having sex? I mean, how are we going to ever _function_ like normal human beings if we can't get through the day without fucking each other every couple hours?"

Tony shakes his head. "What, and every time we're naked that means I have to want to 'fuck you?'" He shakes his head, "Forgive me if I might just want to touch or hold you. Pepper, believe it or not it doesn't always have to go that far. Hell, I _like_ wandering around the place naked on the weekends anyway. And for the record, I'm _alone_ when I do it most of the time."

"That's...that's not what I meant." Pepper takes a seat on the couch and practically melts into the seat. She's just really, really tired. "I've been feeling out of control for weeks now, Tony. And as amazing as being with you is and has been...it's just another variation on the theme."

He sits down beside her, careful to give her some space. "And I'm not trying to attack you...hell, I'm the one who suggested we take a rest first. I know that you're tired and I get how frightening this is." He sighs and sends a wave of affection down the bond before he forces himself to continue. "It's just...will you stop punishing yourself by choosing the worst possible interpretation or motive for everything we do or feel?" He shakes his head. "Because Pepper, we're both human, and we deserve a little mercy."

She can feel herself soaking up his affection like parched soil soaking up rain. Just the way it leaves her feeling more relaxed and at ease makes her realize how much she needs to drop her shields and let him in.

"Tony...I just need you to be really, really careful. Because I've got a hair trigger right now, and I don't want to hurt you. I've never done this before. And since you haven't either, it doesn't help me relax."

Tony holds out a hand, but lets her decide how to take it. "It's not the first time I've dealt with something uncertain by flying by the seat of my pants." He smiles a little and sends another wave of calm in her general direction. "Pepper, if there's a part of your life that you don't want me to look at, just _tell me_. I will do everything in my power to keep out of the places you don't want me."

"That's not really fair, is it? I mean, what, I tell you 'I trust you with these parts of me but not the rest?' Tony, that kind of thinking destroyed my parents' relationship."

"Pepper, humans aren't telepaths for a reason. You have a right to some privacy. I'm not saying that I like that you feel there's anything you'd have to hide from me, but to assume that that means you shouldn't have the right to choose the context?" He shrugs. "We tend not to talk about certain subjects easily because they're _painful_. You think I don't understand that?" He shakes his head. "I can't control what I'll see when I get in there, but I can still do my best to respect your boundaries. Because if I don't..." He shivers a little. "To just root around without concern about how it effects you isn't _love_, Pepper. It's no better than rape."

Pepper watches him for a long time. His words have already lowered one of her defenses - the one where he might just sweep into her life like a hurricane because that's how he is when he's absorbed by something. And his eyes are softening another with their sincerity.

"I know I'm safe with you, Tony," she whispers. "You would never rape me, in any way."

"Before we went upstairs the first time I asked if you had limits. This is no different Pepper, at least not in my opinion." He finally reaches out and rests his hand right next to hers with his palm facing upwards. "If something hurts or scares you more than you can stand when I get inside, I expect you to tell me."

"I can assure you that you would be the first to know if something bothered me." Her smile is a little lopsided. "And you'd probably be knowing it for a long time. I'm not sure if I could keep from hurting you if I panic."

"I'll risk it," he informs her soberly. "Because anything has got to be better than the pain that you're dealing with now." Then he chews on his lip. "Pepper, is it okay to hold your hand?"

"Yeah." Pepper turns her hand over and entwines her fingers with his. "We're going to have to go back in to do this."

"Pick where you're safest," he instructs her softly. "That space you can go to and be at the closest thing to peace in your mind."

"You're going to laugh at me," she mutters. But she rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. In her mind she finds the place where she feels safe, and they end up in the backseat of his limo and the scenery flashing by the window is from the beginning of their drive to the office.

He raises his eyebrow when he notes the location, and she sees the tiniest hint of a smirk at the corner of his lips. "Well I suppose I always found the space a little small and the seats a tad uncomfortable, but on the bright side, at least you know that I'm never the one actually driving."

The jab at himself is deliberate, Pepper realizes after a moment, And for a second she wonders what Tony's safe space is like...and what she'd think of it.

But that is a question for another time. For now there's just what lies in front of them.

"I like being here with you," she admits. "You listen to me better when you're in motion."

"I listen to you better when neither of us have any other distractions." Well other than Pepper's Blackberry, which admittedly he finds unbelievably annoying from time to time. The limo after all is more than a little boring. And Happy has mysteriously managed to break him of the habit of bringing any parts or circuit boards along whenever they had a particularly long ride. He'd learned long ago that tormenting his personal assistant was to be his main form of entertainment of most of these rides.

"You see me when we're in here. I mean, sometimes we talk when you're in your garage, but you're always distracted by something. Or at least, almost always. But here I know I can get your attention."

"Pepper, when we're in here you have less to obsess over as well...and by the time we're this close to wherever we're going you tend to stop trying to herd and are content to just talk to me." Pepper raises as eyebrow at that summation, but Tony just shrugs a little. "Beside in here there's plenty of proximity but not much room for giving in to...er...temptation."

She's never thought of that part of it. It figured he would.

"If we're going to do this...well, it seemed like the logical place." Because he does see her when she's here, and he listens to her, and she finds it easier to talk to him and be herself.

"This might take me a minute," she warns softly as she tries to relax herself.

"Can I make a scientific observation?" Tony asks her before she can get very far. She tilts her head, but nods a little. "Thermodynamically speaking the best way to avoid overstressing any system is to deliberately control the release of energy in small instead of giant bursts." Then he grins a little. "In layman's terms Pepper, if you're worried about frying my brains I'd suggest you drop a few shields at a time instead of going cold turkey and hitting me with everything all at once."

Pepper laughs softly. "I'd listen to that advice if I were you, Tony, because you're the one who needs to worry about frying brains. Dropping my shields doesn't let things out...it lets everything in. It's one of the reasons I wanted to get farther away from Malcolm. Just the strength in his shields would probably be enough to bruise me right now. To put this in your terms, this is you going into a war zone without your suit."

Which was another way to look at it, she realized after a moment. For because as scared as she was for herself, maybe she'd underestimated the danger to him. Because it was one thing to wonder if he'd find anything in her head he might object to, but it was another thing entirely to realize the faith he was putting in her.

How many times had she said that she trusted him? She was risking emotional torment yes, but he was risking his life. And he was disregarding all the possible danger to himself because she was hurting. 'Oh God, it's the other day...the same choice all over again.

Not two days ago she'd had too choose between running and facing the dragon herself. Except in her case she'd chosen to run away, an act that, given time would have likely killed both of them. Tony though, was choosing the opposite. He was running toward something and not the other way. That this might still cause him harm, the thing she'd most wanted to prevent, was ironic on levels she couldn't express. Because this at least had a chance of success, and the risk had turned out to be the same either way.

"We're going to take this slow," she says as she pushes at his shoulders, making him lie back on the wide seat. She follows after, settling against his chest and in the outside world she knows their bodies are mimicking their actions here. Her head comes to a rest near his arc reactor; his arms close around her, one hand resting at her waist and the other between her shoulder blades. She can feel his chin against her hair.

His heart is a loud steady thumping in her ear. Every breath he takes raises her up a little before she settles back down as he exhales. She deliberately starts breathing with him, focusing on the rhythm as she carefully drops all but her last guard. It's that instinctive shield that's probably responsible for her sanity and the only one she's not consciously aware of.

Her mind fumbles, looking for the release that will bring it down but it's like looking for a light switch in a dark, unfamiliar room.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, the space they're in changes - the limo fades away and the world shifts into something completely different. One moment they're lying on the cushioned seat of the limo, the next they're in a child's single bed.

Tony raises an eyebrow just a little. There are fairies on the wall. And the ruffle on the bedspread is a gauzy, sparkly mix of yellow green and purple. "Uhm...Pepper?" Tony whispers after a moment. Pepper is still reaching for that final shield within her head. She can't for the life of her find the switch though, so she sighs and opens her eyes. "What is that?" Tony asks cautiously, as he points to the biggest ugliest tom cat that he has ever seen.

Pepper squeaks a little in disbelief. "Sophocles?!"

She looks around the rest of the room and she remembers all this. This was the first house they'd lived in after the commune, right before she started 3rd grade. Before that, her contact with other people had been limited to mostly adults and a few children. Then they'd moved and she remembers how _rotten_ she'd felt the first few weeks of school, remembers her mom talking about how she'd nearly called Malcolm in because she'd been afraid Pepper was having some kind of nervous breakdown.

But things had started to get better one day, and Pepper had never looked back.

For the first time in years, Pepper thinks about growing up on the commune. Most of what she remembers are impressions; being outdoors a lot, safety to wander everywhere because there was no one around who she didn't know, the freedom.

How many people in that commune had been like her, like Tony or Malcolm?

There is no "switch" to lower her defenses Pepper finally realizes. There is only her acceptance of the emotional currents around her. There is only her willingness to feel them. It's like standing naked outside, every inch of skin bare and oversensitive. It's strange, and confusing, and she kinda loses her bearings for a moment, but there's no pain.

Sophocles meanwhile growls right at Tony, and then dashes out of the room. "Uhm...okay. That was creepy. I take it you used to have a cat?" When she looks over at Tony she finds him standing with his head tilted to one side, looking half amused and halfway curious.

"He wasn't mine...he was Mom's. She said cats were good luck. And to be truthful he did keep all the mice restricted to the attic..."

She'd forgotten about Sophocles, and his deep, purring rumble. He'd liked to sit in the window and greet her at the door whenever she'd arrived home from school. "Mom!" A girl's voice finally broke through the silence, and then they both heard the front door slam. "Mom, I'm home...and I've got something _really _cool to show you!"

Tony quirks the other eyebrow, but Pepper feels the hair on the back of her neck raise, because the voice is familiar in an uncanny sort of way. Before she scarcely realizes it she is exiting the bedroom and heading for the kitchen, where she instinctively knows the child will be.

"Mother...Mom!" The childish voice again. "I did it just like you said, and this time I got an A." There was no answer back though, just a silence that echoed through the house. And Pepper knows that there won't be an answer.

In the kitchen her younger self pauses. Her backpack is still in hand, and her face is lit with excitement. She opens her mouth to holler again, only to have Sophocles appear and start rubbing madly around her ankles and feet. "Hey there, boy." The child reaches down to pet him. The creature began to meow at her loudly and pathetically.

"Hey now...cut it out, you can't be that hungry. Mom fills your bowl every day at two o'clock..."

The words die off as the child looks over at the refrigerator and sees the note on the shiny metal door. 'Out with friends, Ginny. They know a great meditation. Please feed Sophocles. I had to leave in a hurry...'

The cat keeps on yowling and like a balloon, Pepper sees herself deflate.

What's more, she feels the echoes of that day shiver through her. The brief, stabbing moment of fear because this house is still unfamiliar and old and it makes strange sounds as the beams heat and cool. There is also loneliness because she still hasn't gotten used to living with just her and her mom, even though at this point they've been out of the commune for a year. There is bewilderment because even as a child she recognizes that their house has enough room for company.

But her mother forgot that and once again, she's alone.

As if the emotions are a chain, the scene around them jerks and shudders, melting away and reforming. Fifth grade, another house in another state. She remembers coming home to find Malcolm sitting on the front steps looking tense and brittle. She'd been moody and withdrawn on that day - tired and weary from both school and the pre-onset symptoms of puberty.

"Is Mom here?" Malcolm's answering smile had been tight. Answer enough. It was just the two of them. Apparently it was going to be one of those visits, with the adults in the house walking on egg shells around each other.

"She's out with friends for the evening. She thought we might like some time for just us. So, how have you been, Ginny? Your mother tells me you've been having some trouble - maybe I can help."

She hates that tone, hates the urge to spill her guts. Hates how her mother only ever lets the man come visit when her daughter's being a 'problem.'

"She's never _home_. I'm surprised she even noticed."

Pepper freezes the scene before it can go any farther. The introduction of such bitterness - she'd been twelve! - was too much to stand. She'd loved her mother so much, but mother and daughter had never found it easy to communicate and Pepper had never been one to complain. She doesn't want Tony to get the wrong impression, though - when her mother was home she had always been so _happy_. It had always made the fact that she had been so unreliable not so bad because it'd been worth it to have her there at _all._

But bitterness was there, existing hand in hand with the happiness. Both emotions were so strong... And Pepper realizes there's no sugar coating _anything_ in here.

"You were having troubles?" Tony murmurs beside her, bringing her back to the now with the carefully phrased question.

She turns to see him standing there with an unspeakable kind of compassion in his eyes. "Not with the actual classes. I was having actual migraines. I told Malcolm that and the doctors at the clinic we went to did a lot of tests." She snorted. "They concluded that I had 'abnormal levels of stress.' Mom thought..." Pepper pauses before she continues explaining. "Well Mom was watching pretty much from the day I was born for signs that I was 'special'. And when she thought she had proof, she always called Malcolm up..."

The scene shifts again, this time in reverse. Suddenly they are traveling backwards in time, until she is nine or ten again. "Don't get me wrong Tony, I _loved _Mal...when Mom wasn't around making demands, he was _awesome_ to spend time with..."

The scene in front of her now isn't in any way painful. Instead it's her and Malcolm in some kind of large art gallery.

"But it's just..._red_," she watches herself say in confusion. "I mean, why would anyone put just one color on a canvas that big? What does it mean?"

Malcolm laughs. "Think of the color red...now close you eyes. What do you see?"

The younger her obeys without question. "Cherry pie. Uhm...that ball from the beach when we went swimming yesterday."

Malcolm kneels down and takes her hand. "And what about smell...can you think of what red smells like?"

The child's eyes pop open and she look at him skeptical. "It's a color, Mal...they don't _have_ a smell."

"No...but grass does. And some people think of it when they see green. That's why this is Art, Ginny, because of the way that things all tie together in your memory or other senses in your brain." The man smiles at her and the child smiles back. "How's your head?" he asks her after a moment. "Are you still getting a headache?"

Pepper watches her younger self shake her head. "No...uhm, I'm really glad you came this time. Mom has a habit of forgetting my birthday."

"You only turn double digits once." Malcolm laughs. "I couldn't very well miss it."

Beside her, Tony flinches just a bit.

"Pepper..." Tony's voice is troubled when he finally speaks. "Why didn't Malcolm ever try to gain custody of you and keep you with him? I mean...you're happy with him, and it looks as if he was actually making an effort to train you and do stuff that actual parents do..."

"He was just my 'uncle' remember? He was never on my birth certificate...not to mention... well, Tony the circumstances of my birth were technically _illegal. _They were both so young when I was conceived..."

She shifts a little, eyes still locked on the man and child in front of her. "Besides, I did see Malcolm regularly until I was nearly fourteen. Mom occasionally let me spend a month of the summer on the commune so she could go off to various spiritual retreats. Besides you haven't seen what it was like when Mom was actually _there_..."

The scene shimmers and they're standing in a painter's studio, the scent of linseed oil heavy in the air. Pepper can't help the thrill of peace and soft happiness that goes through her at the scent. Her mother had always been happiest when painting, had always been so focused on what she was doing that she'd forgotten to lecture or quiz her daughter about anything "unusual" that might have happened during her day. And no matter what city they ended up in, there'd always been a chair in the corner of the studio for Pepper to curl up in to read, or do homework, or just to sit and watch.

These had been the times she'd loved her mother the most, and the best parts of any given day.

Pepper doesn't notice how Tony himself relaxes a little at her side. Tony notices the seepage of emotion though, mainly because this isn't like the other times Pepper's shared what she's been feeling. Those other times had...well, since they'd usually occurred while they were having sex, they'd been feelings he'd already had himself. This felt more like a current of warm water through a normally chill river. Something out of place but identifiable.

He turns his eyes on the scene playing out in front of him. "You sure you don't want to join me, darling?" A tall redheaded woman smiles back over her shoulder. "You've been studying that list for hours. You must be sick to death of spelling. Painting is good for the soul and even better for creating inspiration."

The child her speaks up from the chair without looking up. "Thanks, but no. If I win the spelling bee than I get to represent the school in the regional finals. I might even win a prize. Besides," the child wrinkles her nose, "When I try and paint mine never turn out anywhere as good as yours."

"Yes well, darling, that's because you're too boxed in. You never let yourself simply _feel_ anything..." The comment makes Tony clench his fists, but he gets nothing from Pepper. When he turns to face the adult her, he's amazed to see her nodding.

"She was right, you know. It was years before I learned to be even remotely artistic. College helped because I took a lot of classes in art appreciation. Unfortunately by the time I really 'got it' though, Mom was already buried and unable to appreciate it."

'Yeah well maybe you finally 'got it' because she was no longer fucking with you.' He doesn't say the words out loud, and he very carefully shields them. Instead he studies Pepper's mom: the woman standing in front of the large canvas in paint-covered clothes looks too young to be _anyone's_ mother. She's certainly too young to die a few years later, if he remembers what Pepper's said before.

"Pepper, how old was your mother when you were born?" She'd told him once that her mother had died literally weeks after she'd turned seventeen.

Pepper looks at him like he's thrown her for a loop. "Um...seventeen or eighteen, I think. She never really kept track."

That wasn't strictly true, her Mom had been fifteen to her father's seventeen. Though knowing Malcolm as well as she did, she assumed her mother had misled him about her age. Admitting that, however, just felt unfair to a woman not here to defend herself. The consequences of lying here, though, were something Pepper wasn't prepared for - and something she certainly hadn't anticipated.

All of a sudden she was leaning against an upstairs railing - looking down at a set of screaming adults as the paced in the kitchen. Or rather Amelia Potts had been pacing, her father had been sitting in a chair in the kitchen with his head in his hands. And from where she's standing now she can psychically feel the agony of their now severed bond.

"Don't even try and tell me it's not reasonable to be talking sex with her as soon as humanly possible. Are you forgetting when she was born I was barely sixteen?"

Malcolm had sighed and raised his head. "I'm not saying you shouldn't bring the subject up, and you know that. I'm just saying to remember she's only eleven. She deserves to be a little innocent, for as long as she can. Because if she ever does get powers I _guarantee_ you it'll be traumatizing enough! Imagine getting flashes of what the typical single high school or college boy is thinking!"

Malcolm had been right about that, albeit she hadn't understood it until college. Thankfully she'd managed by then to learn some rudimentary shielding. It hadn't been as embarrassing as the way that the boys had stared when she'd been thirteen and getting her curves, but it had been unsettling irregardless..

Pepper feels the strange lurch she remembers from her childhood, the one she'd felt any time she'd overheard Malcolm and her mom arguing. When she'd gotten old enough to think about it, she'd always thought it had been a reaction to hearing the adults...well, her mom yell. Her mom never raised her voice, except at Malcolm. Now though, Pepper wonders if her child self hadn't just been shoving any bit of sensitivity down so that it couldn't bother her.

"I guess Mom was going to be seventeen on her next birthday when I was born," Pepper whispers to Tony, half lost in the memories. "Or maybe it was Malcolm who was seventeen when I was conceived. To be fair though, it wasn't something that anyone at the commune paid much attention to back then."

Tony meanwhile was cataloguing every detail. But unlike Pepper he isn't studying the adults, he is studying the child. Young Pepper - who is dressed in worn pajamas, looks about eleven or twelve, and her forehead is knotted in pain.

Unlike Pepper, he had the gift of analysis, and he knows exactly what he's looking at.. 'My GOD...she was empathetic. Even back then...but she was also shutting it down...She would have_ had _to.'

How ironic, that the woman who'd apparently wanted nothing more than for her and her daughter to be 'special' had managed to take a child who actually _was_ and force her into repressing it.

'Or was that what she _really_ wanted?' Tony wonders after a moment. Looking at the woman still yelling in the middle of the kitchen. 'Did she want a gifted daughter, or was the idea that she had one more than she could bear.' What happened to a woman who both loved and envied a child who could be what she herself had wanted to be.

Pepper had said something before about dogs in the manger. He wondered if her Mom was the worst one of all.

'Like hell she's now in Afghanistan,' he realizes, thinking of her earlier comment. 'She was in Afghanistan the first 17 years of her life. She's freaking out now because she's finally _home_.'

"They were always like this," Pepper says when she catches Tony looking at her parents. "Sometimes from the moment Malcolm set foot in the house, sometimes it would take longer. A week or two. But it usually ended the same way. Mom would end up yelling and Malcolm would just sit there like he was helpless to stop her. Considering what his gift is, that's probably _exactly_ how he felt."

The room changes around them again. This time they're in a dark bedroom. The only light comes through the door that's cracked open. A sixteen year old Pepper, seemingly all arms and legs sits against the jamb, listening to the furious yelling coming from further down the hall. As they watch, she looks down and picks at one nail, then at something on the floor as she listens. There's no other reaction, as if the yelling has become commonplace.

"Just _get out_!" A female voice screams from the bedroom. "It's obvious by now that you have nothing to give_ either _of us!"

That had brought the teenager's head up, and Tony could clearly read the disbelief.

"Like hell. I'm not going to let you do this any more. Not to yourself, and not to her and me." Malcolm burst from the bedroom down the hall, and for the first time Tony gets a image of Pepper's father truly angry... "Ginny, pack your bags. You and I are leaving."

"You even _try_ that Malcolm, and I'll have you arrested for kidnapping. She's only sixteen and that means legally she still belongs with me..." The pain that fills the room then is enough to physically curl Tony in on himself.

"And if I want to go with him?" the teenage Pepper intones back calmly.

"Then you're out of luck. I have final say until the day you turn eighteen."

The rage that threatens to swamp Tony is pure and absolute. So much he's surprised it doesn't physically manifest and knock the image of Pepper's mother right off her feet.

Pepper though is only looking at the situation numbly. "It was the last time he ever saw her. Or I think so anyway. If I'd known what would happen...I wouldn't have said what I did"

The next picture is of Pepper coming home from school again, this time letting herself in the house without a word. She set down her bag and poured herself a glass of ice tea. "I should have known something was wrong. She was actually home," Pepper admits with a shiver.

Enraptured, Tony watches as the teenager Pepper walked down the hall and paused in the doorway of her mother's bedroom. Pepper keeps on speaking as she stares at her other self. "After that Mom got...I guess 'despondent' is the right word. She stayed in bed for almost a week. I thought she'd snap out of it though, I never thought that she'd actually..." The words die off.

"Mom. I'm gonna make tuna salad for supper. Unless you'd like me to make chili instead. Would you like that with warm cornbread?" The woman on the bed doesn't answer. "Mom?" the teenager says again as she swings open the bedroom door.

Pepper cuts the memory off so that they're left standing in a black void. "She overdosed on some kind of doctored peyote. It looked like she was trying to catch a vision of something, even though that wasn't even her gift...or remotely close to it." Pepper shrugs, like it's an old pain, but Tony can feel the freshness of it drilling into his teeth like they're rotting from the inside out.

Then she flashes them back to limo. And once again they're sitting watching the world pass. "She was...she was the most amazing artist I think that I've ever seen." Pepper shakes her hand, reaching out to rub her forehead. "I wish I'd known how to hold her to the world just a little bit longer. If I hadn't said what I did, maybe she'd still be around."

'At what price?' Tony wonders to himself. 'Thirty-one years was more than enough to almost destroy her daughter.' "What happened after you found her? Did you go stay with Malcolm for the rest of the year?"

She shakes her head. "He didn't find out about Mom until almost ten months later. He was in...Borneo, I think. I stayed with another of my mother's friends and started college early through the post secondary program that fall."

She'd gone to college immediately following the death of her mother. Tony can't imagine that kind of self discipline. When his own parents had died it'd been weeks - no months- before he'd been able to focus properly on his work again.

"How did that go?" he asks her gently.

"It was...hard...the first semester. It felt like I was floating through my days. Malcolm came to see me over winter break though. When I told him about it he told me maybe I just needed to try concentrating on the people around me more." She looks at Tony, seemingly unaware that he's feeling so much of what she is...or had. "That was the difference between him and Mom. She would have told me to search for auras that were compatible with mine. Malcolm just told me to put an effort into listening to the voices of the people around me when they spoke, to meet the eyes of the people _I_ was talking too... When I finally figured out why I had an easier time when I went back, I tried to call him to accuse him of tricking me, but I couldn't get a hold of him."

"How did he take the news about your Mom?"

Pepper shrugs. "I don't know. I wasn't there the day he got back to the states and actually found out." She rubs her forehead. "I wouldn't be surprised to find out though that he was crushed only as much as he was relieved.

"Besides, by the time I was even capable of processing what it was like to be rejected by a lover, much less over and over again, it seemed... It wasn't something I wanted to ask him. It felt like pouring salt into an open wound, I guess." There's no images this time, but there is the faint sound of a man talking, explaining how things aren't going to work out and way. It's an unfamiliar voice and Tony doesn't understand why her memory is pulling this up until he hears her voice, mature now, saying how she understands and it's a lot to swallow and of course he should take some time to think about it...

"This is the guy you mentioned to me isn't it? The idiot from college?" As soon as he says it the voice acquires a physical form. The man is short and muscularly built. In fact he looks disturbingly enough, a lot like _him_.

"My God.." Pepper murmurs under her breath. "I try to avoid thinking about it so much I totally missed the visual similarities."

Tony doesn't know what to say to that, so he says nothing at all. Though he's going to ask Malcolm later - because Pepper has always had foresight and he can't help but assume that they're probably related.

"His name was Phillip Nelson." Pepper continues by way of explanation. "We met my sophomore year in statistics class, and for a while I thought I'd met someone who really, truly 'got me.'"

The man in front of them checks his watch, then pulls out a cell phone and starts talking into it urgently. Tony stares at him hard a moment. "What was it that made you think that?"

"He was a scientist...with an interest in parapsychology. But he was also very reserved, and I thought..." she shakes her head. "If anyone I thought he'd understand why I valued my privacy." She shakes her head. "He wasn't the man I expected him to be though. Which in the end was nobody's fault but my own." She shrugs a little, "I didn't see the pattern then. But I guess I used to have a talent for finding high maintenance companions who are just never satisfied with themselves or me."

Another scene jumps into life, quicker than any of the rest. Tony has just enough time to recognize an interior room at Stark Industries before Pepper's eyes widen in shock and she slams the lid shut tight on that memory. Everything goes grey for a moment - though from the way he's feeling, Tony wonders if it's only _his_ vision that goes misty. When he can see again, Pepper's several feet away, her arms crossed around her stomach and a miserable look on her face.

"Sorry," she whispers, shifting back as he takes a step forward. "I..I guess that I overreacted."

He braces himself for what he knows can't be good and deliberately reaches a hand out, as it were possible to grasp the memory.

They're in the boardroom again. It's probably six months after that initial day he hired her.

He doesn't remember this encounter, but obviously she's never forgotten it. Looking at her _now_ he can see how pale she is, and how tightly her mouth is set. She's probably got a PMS headache or cramps or something, because he still catches her looking like that some days when she's run out of Midol or whatever it is that she takes for her symptoms. There's two large stacks of file folders in front of her with smaller piles radiating out from them, and her laptop is making noises like it's working hard to process something. The Tony he's looking at is happily oblivious as he tilts back in his chair and tosses sharpened pencils at the ceiling.

He even goes so far as to pull the one in Pepper's hand out of her grasp to entertain himself. He's chattering away how Pepper takes her life too damn seriously and how there's more to life than work, work, work...

"If you want to keep disappearing into the basement for weeks at a time Sir, then I'd suggest you start thanking God for what you've labeled my obsessive compulsion." Her other self walks over and hands him a clipboard before pulling a pen out of his inner coat pocket. "I need all five of these signed. After that your newest set of parts has arrived, and you can take yourself home and just leave me be."

"But I'm keeping you company, Pepper." He grins up at her and doesn't take the clipboard. "Why don't we go out for drinks? You really need to relax. This can wait until after."

"Mr. Stark, by the time 'after' rolls around, it'll likely be close to nine o'clock. And frankly, I don't want to have to put in the three hours needed to finish this at nine, because I've been up since almost 5:30 am. Now will you _please_ sign these and get out of my hair?"

The other him pouts but nods. "I suppose I'll just have to have enough fun for both of us then." He shakes his head. "You know Pepper, you're a kick ass when it suit you yes, but most of the time you're nothing but an old lady." His head is bowed over the papers he's signing. He'd never seen the glower on her face or the slight tightening of her fist that she eventually moves behind her to grind into the small of her back.

Well, at least he knows how to identify when she has cramps now.

"I'm sorry," Tony says in true apology. "Would it help if I were to pound my own face in for being a bastard?"

She snorts. "It was just you being you, Tony. If I hadn't already felt like crap, I probably would have let you stick around and pester me. Your enthusiasm is usually pretty invigorating...and familiar." The room flickers between an office and the back of the limo. "There was a reason I always studied in Mom's studio. It was always easier to concentrate when she was painting."

"Pepper, forgive me, after what I've seen, if I'm not all that comforted by hearing you compare me to your mother." He shakes his head. "Did she ever have any clue at all how much or how often she _hurt_ you?"

Pepper's face falls. "Tony...that was just...that was who she was. She was flighty, and creative, and always looking for next thing that would fix her life. And even if I'd ever been able to find the right words to explain to her how I felt...I was just too young. And she was my mom and I loved her despite all that. She did her best."

"You're rationalizing it Pepper. _Yes_ she was young when you were born. But so was your Dad, and he at least tried to grow up enough to be a good parent when he was actually around." He shakes his head. "You keep making this your fault, but Pepper, you were the _child_. She was supposed to be taking care of you, not the other way around." He shakes his head. "She didn't do that. Instead she _badgered_ you with subtle criticism or ignored you altogether. It's no surprise you responded by subconsciously suppressing your talents, which might have been what she was aiming for."

In hindsight that might not have been the best way to say it, and judging by the look on Pepper's face it was definitely not the kindest. He watches her start pulling herself back emotionally. "Pepper, I'm sorry, that did not come out in the way that I meant it..."

"Like hell," Pepper tells him fiercely. "Tony, she was my _mother_..."

He reaches forward and tugs her gently into his arms. "It doesn't make the way she treated you _right_." He buries his face in her hair. "God Pepper, I'm feeling everything you're feeling. Tell me honestly, would you treat your own kid that way?"

She's stiff in his arms and he can feel the mixture of sadness, love, and anger churning through her. "Parents have flaws, Tony." She doesn't sound angry, just defensive. "Or have you forgotten how many people died at Iwo Jima?"

The words sting a little and he briefly bows his head. "Too many, Pepper. And I'm sure that my Dad struggled with it just like I did. It's part of what makes both of us human." Something in his brain clicks. "Your parents were bondmates weren't they...or at least meant to be?" He shakes his head. "No wonder you're so scared of this whole fucked up thing."

When he doesn't push her back some of Pepper's out of control emotions settle. "They should have been bondmates," Pepper clarifies. "And they were for awhile. Malcolm said that Mom just never felt as if she was...good enough, I suppose. That she fought the bond, and so he did the same because his gifts didn't work on her and there was no other way to show her he wasn't trying to push her or force her to be someone that she wasn't. He eventually found someone to break the bond. They stayed occasional lovers, but apparently it wasn't enough."

Tony shivers as her holds her. "And he's still sane? My respect for your dad just grew by leaps and bounds." Her arms finally raise up and squeeze him back almost involuntarily.

"I-I know that from what you saw, my mom didn't look like much, Tony. But you've only seen a fraction of my memories of her. So please don't judge her."

"How about we make a deal? I'll try not to villianize her, if you promise to stop acting like she's a saint." He steps back a little, and lifts her chin. "Because you have to face that something is broken before you can have any hope of fixing it. And we already know what happens when you try and hold things together in the wrong form for too long."

She glowers at him, less angry then before. There's something about this position that is draining all the fight out of her. "You are never going to let me forget that, are you? Can you please keep in mind that the only example of a bond I saw before us was a broken one that still had enough power to leave everyone miserable?"

"I didn't bring it up to rub it in your face, I brought it up to remind us that if we can't face up to the past how are we ever going to stop it from repeating?" This time in addition to his words, he deliberately reaches out with the bond. The emotion he sends isn't judgment or condemnation - it's love without measure and an honest desire to see all of this just stop hurting.

Pepper closes her eyes and lets it wash through her until she's closer to being calm than she's been in weeks.

Without any of her defenses up she can feel his love more clearly, can feel it soak into nooks and crannies that have been protected until now. For the first time she realizes just how naked she's become in front of him...and she hasn't felt anything but her own memories. He's shielded her from everything - from his emotions, from anything that is happening in the outside world...

She wonders for the first time how long they've been like this. Too long if the way he's starting to breathe is any indication.

"How are you feeling?" She cups his face like she's searching for a temperature.

"A little tired," he admits with a shrug of his shoulders. "If there's anything else to be done in here, then I suggest you do it quick."

"No, we're done." She slowly starts raising her own shield, not wanting to trap him inside of it or something. "You can start pulling back."

He nods a little and she feels him start pulling back from her mind, and once they're out she becomes aware again of her physical body. They're on the couch still, with their hands still entwined. Tony, though is a distinct shade of green.

"Oh no." Pepper stands up, wobbling a little as the blood rushes from her head though the room and her vision stabilize quickly. 'Malcolm!' she calls with her mind as she bends over Tony and presses her fingers against his neck to test his pulse. When he bats her hands away she's mildly reassured, but his skin is still clammy enough to concern her.

"I'm fine. Just tired." He's quick to reassure her. "But when you do this for me I suggest you start by taking some painkiller and you have an full stomach. Because the heartburn...definitely not any fun." He starts to dry heave.

"When I do this for you, I'll have more strength available to me than you do. Not to mention this is still the first of a handful of times you've even tried anything like this." She helps shift him so he's lying down and then calls for Malcolm again, a bit more desperately.

'Is this normal?' she demands of her father as she thrusts the image of Tony's face into his mind.

'I'll be up in a moment,' her father sends back. 'Sorry to send this way, but you need to get some food into him immediately.'

"Malcolm says you need to eat. Stay here - I'll be right back" Pepper hurries into the kitchen where she puts together a plate of whatever's near at hand. Considering her cooking spree earlier in the day, it's quite a bit if a little eclectic. Lastly she pulls a bottle of water from under a cabinet, afraid that cold water might upset his stomach.

By time she gets back to Tony, Malcolm is at his side, and the man has one hand on his forehead and the other one his wrist. "Hmm...elevated respirations but normal heart rate...I don't think there's any real danger if you're not tachycardic."

Tony raises an eyebrow at the medical jargon, and Malcolm smiles at him as he takes a mug of chicken soup from Pepper. "I take it Pepper never told you then that I'm a licensed medical doctor. I worked for years now for Doctor's without Borders."

"Why didn't you tell us he could exhaust himself like that?" Pepper demands, ignoring the rest of the conversation as superficial. "Or at least try to limit us in some way? Three hours is way too long for anyone as new to this as he is to keep that up." She looks pointedly at the clock when Tony makes a noise of disbelief. "Even I would have a hard time past an hour or so. That was the longest I was ever able to stay with him before."

"Somebody told me to keep my distance. What, you're telling me _you_ couldn't tell that he was overextending himself?"

"I...uhm...I was kind of shielding as much as I could." Tony admits to Malcolm sheepishly, and earns a glare from both father and daughter.

"You're in hot water," they both inform him simultaneously.


	9. Chapter 10

"You're in trouble you know

"You're in trouble you know," Pepper tells him confidentially, as she helps him down the hallway to the bedroom. "Malcolm may be acting all nice and reasonable right now, but I know that expression, and once this headache's gone you're going to get the most annoying 'non-lecture' you've ever had in your life."

"Pepper, if he manages to say anything I haven't heard from you in one form or another over the past seven years, I'll be amazed." Tony tries not to rest too much of his weight on his lover, but it's almost impossible considering how much like crap he feels. All of his attention right now is focused on remaining on his feet.

"Tony, my father doesn't yell. He's just a veritable brick wall of reason and bottomless calm. Which I guarantee you, will become worse than yelling fairly quickly."

"Like I said...nothing I haven't heard before." Tony groans as Pepper helps to ease him down onto the bed. He flops back against the mattress with a sigh of relief.

"I am _not_ that bad," she informs him tartly. "And don't lie down yet. We need to strip your clothes off first."

"Of course you're not as bad. You actually raise your voice." Tony sits up stiffly and tries to do as she requests. His attempts to get his shirt off are uncoordinated, but he manages to remove it without any help.

"I also throw things occasionally." Pepper snorts, "Though you haven't managed to piss me off quite that badly yet."

"Keyword 'yet,'" Tony murmurs, pushing himself back up onto wobbly legs to try and remove his sweatpants. "Okay head-rush." He flops back down. "I'm thinking you'll have to settle for admiring my chest." Pepper doesn't say anything, but he's not totally surprised to feel her hands working the waistband of his sweats over his hips. She always has been determined to have things her way when she's decided what's best for him.

"Hey, careful," he complains as she jerks the material out from under him. "Delicate merchandise here."

"Maybe you should have been thinking that yourself," she says as she pulls the rumpled blankets up around him, "Before you halfway fried out your brain. You told me you'd respect your _limits,_ Stark."

Something in his voice makes her back off a little. There's a fair amount of apology, but also a deeper undercurrent of sharpness. "I was_ trying_..." He mumbles closes his eyes. "Please remember that unlike your Dad and you, I'm the one who's been in this world for exactly _two days_. I'm adjusting on the fly, and that can cause glitches. It's not like anyone's offered me a manual on how to do this, you know."

"Yes - but you've had a lifetime of pushing your limits to fall back on. You need to start erring on the side of caution, Tony." She starts stripping off her own clothes, unsurprised when Tony opens his eyes at the sound of clothing being removed. There's no sexual hunger present on his face though, just a wariness of sorts.

"Pepper, no offense but I would strongly suggest that you find somewhere else to sleep if you're still feeling pissed. I'm getting enough of a headache just feeling the dredges of it down the link." He sighs and curls up into an almost fetal ball. "I don't suppose you'd get me a glass of whisky and some aspirin."

"The aspirin you can have." Pepper kicks off the shorts she'd raided from his closet and heads for the bathroom. While she's there, she deliberately modifies her breathing, trying to calm her fury a little, because Tony's right, she's going to do him more harm than good if she continues this useless, angry stewing.

He's actually just asked her not to touch him, which may be a first since she'd kissed him in the basement. It's a rude shock, like a glass of water across her face.

She emerges from the bathroom and helps him sit and take the pills.

"I'm not asking to get hammered, Pepper, just a little buzzed. Alcohol usually makes things kind of muted." He groans. "And right now the whole damn world is just too fucking loud, bright and smelly."

"Jarvis, half lights. Did you just say _smelly_?" He curls back up. "Tony?" Pepper sets down the now empty glass so she can run her hands through his hair. "Stark, you're starting to scare me here. What _exactly _is wrong?"

"I told you: my senses are totally out of whack. Even these sheets feel like I'm lying on splinters of glass."

'Which is definitely not normal.' "Okay. I'm going to...try something. I think, to help calm you down." Pepper takes off her shirt and climbs under the blankets with him. She's still in her underwear, but there's enough exposed skin to get the job done she thinks. "Can you get us to _your_ safe place?" she asks. If the problem has to do with his shields, it'd help to see them from the inside out.

He grits his teeth. "I can try..." A moment later though they're both standing in the workshop. Pepper knows something is wrong though, because the room, though far more comfortable, is still distinctly foggy, and there's a dull but highly annoying whine in the background.

She pushes him down on the couch then stands in front of him with her hands braced on her hips as she tries to figure out what to do next. 'What did Malcolm say – these places are mostly metaphoric?' "Jarvis, quarter lights and turn on some kind of white noise generator if we've got it please," she instructs.

Tony shifts uncomfortably. "Also, get the fans running and get rid of that smell..."

"There's a smell?" that makes Peppers brow knit.

"You _can't_ smell it?" he asks in disbelief.

Only suddenly she can. It smells like rancid sweat and oil – like someone hasn't done laundry for _weeks_.

Pepper frowns and walks over to his desk. There's usually peppermint in the drawers that will help at least temporarily. "Tony, this place is in your head...it's a representation of your gifts. There should_ be_ no sensations that you don't allow...unless..." She curses as understanding hits. "Tony, you need to visualize those Star Trek shields Malcolm had us create earlier today."

He tries, but all she sees is a weak glow that sparks in and out. "Okay, stop," she tells him, concerned by how weak he is at the moment. "Forget the high tech stuff, for now. Can you get into the suit?"

Pepper makes the suggestion because the fog in the basement seems to be clearing. And with the suit he'll be drawing from memories instead of struggling to grasp concepts that are only explained fully in metaphor.

"Jarvis, initiate assembly protocol." Tony staggers up of the couch and over to the platform. A moment later the mechanical arms come down, and the process of buckling him into metal endoskeleton and outer plating begins. What's odd is that the results are neither clunky nor metal.

As soon as the arms retract the suit fades back into his skin, and he left in a well worn t-shirt, his favorite blue jeans and an old pair of sneakers. He looks like he does on a lazy day over the weekend when he's about to go for a drive or spend a day puttering around in his shop.

Pepper stares at Tony – who looks a little surprised himself – and felts her heart start hurting a little. He looks…comfortable. She can see his whole body starting to relax: but he'd had to come to his "safe space" to feel that way…

She'd _known_ she was overwhelming him, that their new situation had to be affecting his sense of stability, even if he's done so well denying it. And he hasn't had a chance to sit down and have anyone help _him_ with all these changes. Everyone's been so focused on helping _her _that they've forgotten that Tony is still in over his head.

How had he said it? 'I've only been in this world two days.'

'He's every bit as lost in all this as I am.' And just because he handles change better than she does, doesn't mean he does so with less pain. They just have different tolerances and break over different sort of things.

That knowledge makes her _sick _at the same time it leaves her a little humble, and for just a moment it makes her want to curl up in shame.

Because she keeps thinking in terms of her, and not in terms of _them_.

"I'm sorry," she tells him softly, before walking over to where he stands, throwing her arms around his neck and simply holding him. She opens the link as wide as she can and starts pouring comfort down from her end. His arms slowly encircle her and pull her close. "I'm sorry," she whispers again as she presses her face into his neck. Because all that her fighting against this has managed to do is bruise the man she loves.

She reaches for the threads of their bond, delicately searching through them as she separates his from hers. His just...feel...thinner. More fragile. He's used up most of his physical and mental energy to protect her even though he's every bit as strained.

Well, she's at full strength now, and it's time to start rebalancing things.

She's preparing to wrap her strength around his when Tony, sensing the short withdrawal and assuming it's an attempt to distance herself from him, tightens his arms around her to the point where it's hard for her to draw a deep breath.

"You're not to blame for what I ignorantly did to myself. I'll get better at this, Potts. Please don't leave, it will just take some_ time._"

Given that every time before now, her reaction has been to run rather than continue hurting him, Pepper doesn't snap back that she _is_ to blame, or that this is her fault. Instead she wraps her strength around him like a blanket, pulling it close around him until she's the one handling the shields for both of them.

"I'm not going anywhere," she murmurs into his ear.

He shudders at the sensation, and his knees actually buckle - though not so much with pain as with trembling relief. Then he sighs like Atlas with the world suddenly lifted up off of his shoulders. "Okay, how did I not know that I had that headache until it was _gone_?"

'Because you're a novice and no one has been paying attention.' "I'm sorry," she just repeats softly. "I should have remembered how well we work together and trusted that we could work through this too. And you're right, you're learning this with a gun to your head."

"No more so than you," is his whispered reply. "Pepper, not to devalue this moment or anything, but can we move this to the couch? Because I need to sit or I'm going to fall over."

"You're already lying down in the real world," she reminds him gently, but she leads him back over to the couch anyway. Because she doesn't see any harm in doing the same while they're here. Right now the goal is rest in any way she can provide it.

Tony flops down on the couch with a sigh, stretching out the long way and then pulling her down to rest atop his chest. "Yes, well I don't think that I distinguish the border between real and the metaphorical worlds as well as you do. But then you're the one who's the empath, so you're probably more naturally equipped…."

"Where do you want to be?" she asks, avoiding the opportunity to correct him. His own empathy is something she wants to leave to Malcolm, if only because she's not sure how to test how far it reaches.

"Well my actual bedroom is more cozy..." He smiles a little. "Though it's fitting somehow having you down here. It's not many women who ever get the privilege."

'Many women?' Try none at all. Okay a few got to ride the elevator down for a look at the cars, but to her knowledge, Tony's shop has always been his literal sanctuary.

"As long as you have a garage, I'll be coming down to drag you out of it," she promises as she gently pulls their awareness back to the physical world. "How do the sheets feel now?" she asks as she shifts against him to find a more comfortable position.

"Like silk again..." Tony shakes his head as if to clear it a little. "Okay, since when do my gifts effect my literal senses?"

Pepper strokes his hair. "Since you gave yourself a bit of a feedback loop. Your body wasn't processing between physical and psychic sensations is my guess."

"I suppose it makes some sense." He groans. "It's really going to suck though, if it's a regular thing." He raises a hand then, to study the palm of it almost curiously.

"What are you looking at?" Pepper can feel the ghostly impressions of his movement and tries to dull the sensitivity of the shield she's got wrapped around him. She's not terribly successful, and it leaves her a little strained.

Tony seems to sense that, because he lowers his hand.

"It…it stung for a moment," he tells her softly. "Like I'd actually cut my hand on shattered glass, and I was checking to make sure I wasn't literally scratched or bleeding."

Pepper threads her fingers through his. "Tony, if we reacted that strongly, there would have been days that I would have come into work with open wounds."

"Pepper, have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? You've lost weight and you've got bruises under your eyes – there _has_ been physical reaction. I thought..." He draws a deep breath. "I thought for a while that you might be dying."

"That's what it felt like some days," she admits softly. "And then there were the days when it was just such a _relief_ to be near you. It was like I was high or something."

"So then these gifts_ can_ have psychosomatic repercussions, though yours thankfully don't seem to be as sense based as mine. I don't know yet though if that a matter of our individual styles or our levels of training."

"These gifts can cause stress," she replies. "Insomnia and lack of appetite are symptoms of stress. Can you try to stop moving so much? I can feel it."

"Then Pepper, _stop_...that's a pretty good sign it's too much for you." He sighs a little. "I've had a few minutes to rest and my shields are working again; it should be enough for the time being. We just need to both rest before we try anything more stressful."

"It doesn't hurt," she tells him. "I said I can feel it. Your arm moves, and my brain tells me mine is too except it's not."

"Okay that would be unsettling." He chuckles slightly. "Pepper, you can't handle both our shielding indefinitely, we've already established that fact."

"Tony..." Pepper twists at their connection, pulling it tighter around him even as she plunges them both into it. It's almost immediately evident to them both the depth of the store of power she has laid up. Even more evident is the way she's tied the edges of the shield together until it's feeding back in on itself. "As long as neither of us does anything particularly stressful, that shield will hold. But if either of us interrupts it, it'll break immediately. Even a few hours to rest will do miles of good after you overextended yourself so badly."

She can feel his sudden awareness of every place their bodies touch. Tony groans at the onslaught. "Define 'stressful' Pepper..."

"Mental stress, not physical stress," she murmurs as she tries to give them a bit more room within the shield so that they're not so tightly bound together.

Tony nods, then closes his eyes. "I...I suggest we try and get some sleep, then. Or do you need to stay awake to keep this thing up and running?"

"I...I...mmm..." Pepper's never been so intrigued by a man's neck before, but she adores Tony's. She loves how they fit together so perfectly, that she can press her lips to the pulse pounding fast under his skin anytime she needs the extra confirmation that he's alive and well. She loves the scent of him, the heat of him, the _need_ in him as he swallows hard.

She's also highly influenced by his own arousal which is threatening to melt them both.

The man in her arms, though, seems to have other plans. He deliberately turns over, so his back is nestled against her front. "Tony?" she whispers in confusion.

He sighs. "Pepper, you're the one who says it always ends up being about sex."

"But you…" Pepper rests her head against his back. "I know what you're feeling, Tony." What's more the feeling is starting to echo back. If she's not as aroused as he is, she's going to be so shortly.

"It's not the first time I've ever been a little frustrated, Pepper. I spent three months in a cave, if you remember. There's a difference between want and _need_. So unless _you_ need this, I'm content to simply be near you."

"You had time to think about..._that..._in Afghanistan?" Pepper asks, sounding a little bit amazed.

"Okay granted, I had an implant in my chest and guns regularly pointed at my skull. But still – Pepper, have you forgotten the side effects of adrenaline? Especially on a body that's used to getting regular chances of relief? Some nights it was literally the only way I managed to stay _sane_."

She shudders and presses closer to him, wondering why she couldn't have picked up on _those_ moments while he was away. That would have provided brief moments of sanity amid all the times she'd been feeling his pain or his fear.

Perhaps she'd just trained herself to carefully not to think about him in that way, since it would have made things uncomfortable during the times he was still safe and at home.

"Who did you think about, when you were doing it?" she asks quietly, not really wanting to know but needing to anyway.

Tony shrugs, "In truth, Pepper, usually no one and nothing, for at least a few blessed minutes."

That wasn't entirely true though, he acknowledges, because there'd also been the occasional dreams. After Yinsen had asked him if he had anyone waiting for him those dreamscapes had changed subtly. He'd dreamed of her a lot, though not in any way that had any meaning sexually.

Instead he'd constantly encountered her in the office or down in the shop - doing paperwork or eating lunch with in the kitchen. It hadn't been risqué exactly, just moments that had made up their lives, glimpses of normal contentment in a world where there had been very little.

"Can I...see?" Pepper's question breaks through his brooding. Her face is serious and she's chewing her bottom lip.

"Pepper, that wasn't the...easiest...time of my life. And I tend to think that you've already seen more pain for my sake than is in the slightest bit fair." He pauses, then shrugs again. "Though in fairness, if we're taking turns showing our pasts, then you're entitled to see that part of my life as well. I'm just...can we wait a little while at least, until I'm not so damn mentally and physically exhausted? Or at least pick a time I actually _enjoyed_ whacking off?"

"Okay." Pepper pulls away and rolls onto her back. "Get some sleep, Tony." There's a disappointment in her voice that he's not sure he understands. He'd have thought that after what she'd said earlier that she's seen more of Afghanistan that anyone would want to.

"Hey." He reaches out a hand and cups her face. "If it matters that much to you, Pepper, you can take your look. I just figured if you're curious about what it's like inside my head when I'm horny it might be more fun when I was thinking of you instead of just trying to be numb..."

"I don't..." Pepper closes her eyes. "The reason I was complaining before about all the touching," she says carefully, "is that I don't like being with you when I feel so completely out of control of myself and my actions. It's scary for me to let go of that much of myself."

He pulls his hand back from her face until it's just lying gently brushing her tightly fisted hand. "I think I understand...though for me at least, sex is _about _being able to let go for a minute. Albeit with the assumption that it's safe to do so because the consequences are minimal or my partner can be trusted to control the fall."

"My partner wore himself out trying to catch me," she says with soft humor in an effort to deflect his concern.

He's still missing something, but he doesn't know what, and he really doesn't know how to ask her. He settles for pulling her closer instead.

"Pepper, I have a question. Is it okay if I ask?" She nods and he picks his words carefully, "I was wondering…were your Mom and Dad _literal_ lovers...after things broke between them?" He sounds like he's afraid the inquiry will break her somehow, and yet he can't quite keep silent either way.

"Why do you ask?" she murmurs back softly, and Tony sighs yet again.

"Because if they were..." He shrugs apologetically. "I'm guessing it wasn't a very pleasant or satisfying thing for either of them. And as an empath yourself I'm imagining it may have left some pretty lasting impressions about how...well frankly _painful_ sex without control could be."

He's right, though she'll probably never actually verbalize it. Her early relationships had been anything but sexually thrilling. There had just too much baggage for her to work through. She'd been accused on multiple occasions of being an obsessive control freak.

But that doesn't really answer his question. "Yeah, they stayed lovers," she admits softly. "Probably because they couldn't help themselves once they were in the same room, because there was certainly no love lost. I guess the remnants of the bond were still too strong to fight."

"So they fought the urge and the failed over and over. Between them and that idiot in college I suppose I should be glad that you like sex at all. I…that's why I'm uncomfortable with you seeing more of Afghanistan. Not because I'm embarrassed, Pepper, but because what I did there had nothing to do with love or positive emotion. Mostly it was just getting out of my own head for a few minutes to a place that no one could touch me."

She absorbs this before answering. "Tony, my wanting to see your memories had less to do with wanting to see you aroused than it did with wanting to know that there were moments that weren't filled with agony. I wasn't with you, but there were times I was _in that cave_. I lived through all the worst parts with you and I haven't really gotten over that yet. It's just so hard to reconcile what I _know_ happened with the positive changes I see in you."

Tony absorbs this for a moment. "Pepper, there were redeeming moments...a good friend I wish you could have known. But those moments are tied in so much with the way he _died_ that it's hard to separate the good from the bad. It's all in a messy jumble and right now it's overwhelming." He shrugs. "Maybe some day when there's been a little time and…distance... I'll be able to view the thing from a broader perspective. But as you know yourself, time doesn't necessarily heal all wounds."

"If you need time, then it can wait," she replies. "It's not something that has to be done _right now_. You're here and I can finally touch you and see you and ask questions to _really _make sure you're alright. I think that will help me a lot. But it is something I'd like you to consider. Whenever you're ready to share with me, I'd like to know."

He smiles again, this time with understanding. He pats the space beside him gently. "So...want to spoon up and cuddle awhile? I promise I'll keep my hands to minimal groping...at least while I'm conscious enough to control them."

She nods and scoots over so that she's pressed up against him again. "Do you mind if I try something?"

"Go ahead," he murmurs in sleepy reply.

"Okay." Very, very carefully, Pepper lowers a few of her own shields inside the one she'd created for him. She doesn't drop all of them, just enough that it feels as if their minds are as close as their bodies, mental "skin" touching.

The effect is both soothing and warm, though with one consequence she hadn't foreseen.

Wherever they make contact there is just the slightest glimpse of what seems to be mostly pleasant memories. It's everything from eating his first popsicle as a boy to the wild rush of his first test flight of the suit. Pepper inhales sharply as his memories rush over her. Many of them flash by too quickly to be registered as anything but sensation, but a few linger and leave her nearly breathless...

Driving a motorcycle too fast down a dark road.

Hot coffee on a cold day.

Silk against bare skin.

A terrifying freefall that ends in elation.

And through it all is something she's never imagined: a feeling not of panic, but of freedom and relief.

A feeling of a life lived without regret and with minimal restraint.

"How do you do it?" she asks in a dazed voice. "How do you handle living like this? There's just so much..." And it's more than a little overwhelming, seeing life through his eyes.

"How do you do otherwise?" he asks her equally softly. "Because the sheer amount of _control_ you exert makes me claustrophobic sometimes."

And the images change: to him literally tied to a chair while guns surround him. To him in a board meeting listening to hours of meaningless drivel while numbers and images of things uncreated run through his head.

To him as a child, forced into a chair by a tutor who made him to do pages and pages of work that he found both boring and far, far too easy.

To him on a couch, with Obie above him, talking about the ways he was going to warp Tony's legacy, when he realized Obie was planning to kill her.

When he'd been helpless and utterly unable to change it.

"Stop, stop, stop." She pushes into his mind, pushes those memories right out of his head. Because this wasn't what she had meant to invoke with the question.

"Sorry," he murmurs. "Wasn't deliberate. I suppose it's my biggest phobia. I _hate_ being trapped."

'Trapped.' The words ring in Peppers' head. Not in control, but out of it entirely, much like her own whole family had become, because of her mother's search for power.

Where she might end up herself if she isn't very careful.

She doesn't know what to do, or what to say, or even what to think. She's so confused by all of this, by the dichotomy of the lazy need of her body and the way her mind is churning through his emotions and hers.

"I'm sorry," Tony says again and the stream of consciousness changes once more.

This time the images are soft. Him with his mother in a rocker swaying back and forth as a little boy. She can feel his father's cool hand on his feverish forehead. There's her own face as he'd disembarked from the plane when he'd finally arrived home from recovering from his capture in Afghanistan.

She shudders and returns to him the sight of his own face coming off the plane, the nearly overwhelming need to go to him that'd had her shifting from foot to foot, joy at seeing him stand upright, even with help.

His reply is the image of her face above him, on top of the laboratory at Stark Industries. Then there was the feeling of shock when he'd seen her at the firefighter's benefit.

The sensation of finally recognizing home.

She remembers that night at the benefit, turning around to find him there in a tux and looking so much the man she'd worked for, for all of those years. There'd been a rigidity to his face that hadn't hidden the desire she'd felt coming off him in waves. Her arms slip around him as she remembers the heat of his hand in hers as he'd pulled her onto the dance floor, and how surprised she'd been by its size when it'd settled against her hip.

From his perspective she can feel the urgent mental pinging. The pure and carnal recognition. 'Mine,' some part of him had known, with that simple view of milk white skin.

"Tony... Her muscles are trembling for some reason - probably because of the need that's washing through her. She raises her head and looks directly at his lower lip. "I….Please?"

His response is a kiss that nearly swallows her whole as he rolls her so that she's spread out on top of him. Suddenly his boxers and her simple bra and panties are more between them than either of them can stand. Her hands reach for her bra and his go for her panties. She's naked in under five seconds, and she presses herself against him, moaning in contentment at the feeling of skin against skin.

"You're going to have to shift if I'm going to get out of these boxers." Not that they're concealing much at the moment. She grinds her hips down as she props herself up on her hands and watches his entire body shudder. "Not what I meant," he gasps.

"I know exactly what you meant." She kneels above him so that he can push his boxers down far enough to kick them off. And then she settles against him again and takes a moment just to enjoy the sensation of skin against skin as it's happening.

"Need. Inside." The words are said through gritted teeth. "Do you want to drive or do you prefer to ride shot gun?"

"I'm driving." She braces herself against his chest and looks down at him. "Are you going to be a good passenger, or a backseat driver?"

"Depends on your respect for the road. And your grasp of the vehicle you're driving." His hands settle on her hips as he smiles at her warmly.

"We're going for a leisurely drive," she warns him.

"Fine. But be warned the engine can prematurely fire under enough pressure. Though thankfully it starts up quickly again."

"I think I have a better command of this engine than you realize," Pepper says with an evil smirk. Tony's about to ask what she means when he feels her… Well, he's not sure _what_ he feels her do, just that it's as if she's twisted the strands of their bond in some way and put a choke hold on any desire for instant gratification. There's hunger yes, but it's mellow and lazy.

"Holy..." She kisses him again before he can finish the sentence. "Watch your language Tony Stark..." Then she smirks. "Though if you want to call me God I suppose I don't have much objection."

He flips her onto her back playfully and pins her hands at her sides. "You are in so much trouble, Potts," he growls as he starts nipping at the exposed line of her neck.

She responds by closing her eyes and simply envisioning her hand stroking up the back of his right thigh. When he gasps in reaction she grins even wider. 'Okay that's going to be a _useful_ talent to have, especially if it doesn't require skin contact.'

"I think you might want to reconsider who's in the most trouble," she whispers as she arches her body under his.

"That's _cheating..._unless..." His eyes narrow a moment and his forehead wrinkles a bit, and then she feels wet heat contact someplace far less innocent than where she'd picked. The gasp the sensation earns him makes him smirk. "Now _that_ is what they call an equal relationship."

She glares at him for a moment, then flips them back the other way so she's once again on top. Her lips catch his just in time to stifle his moan as he gets to experience the sensation of her mouth in multiple places. "Women tend to be better at multitasking," she informs him wickedly. "Besides you _said_ I could drive. What's the matter Tony, don't you trust me with your stick shift?"

"Not as far as I can throw you." He rolls her back over and smiles down at her. "You are positively evil, I'm sure."

She snorts. "Says the former playboy of the entire free world." There's no condemnation, just playful chastisement in her voice

"Research," her replies as he lowers his head to kiss her softly. "Someday I knew there'd be a woman who'd appreciate me for it."

"As long as the final paper's done. Because if any part of you touches any part of any other woman, I'm cutting it off."

He snorts and she uses the chance to push her tongue past his lips.

'As if I would ever want another woman now,' rings his voice in her head.

'Just a disclaimer, Stark,' her own voice echoes back. 'I'm not a particularly pretty person when I get possessive.' And as things stand between them she knows for a fact she's not going to be able to hide her distaste toward certain people anymore.

Tony breaks the kiss in order to meet her eyes. There are some things that just have to be said out loud. "Pepper, I love you. Are you honestly worried that there is any other person in the entire world who could possibly be a rival for you in terms of my heart and attention?"

"No." Her voice is candid. "But I'm very protective of what's mine, Tony. I don't take well to the thought of anyone mistreating it..." A half dozen faces slip through his mind then. Women she'd wanted to strangle on a semi-regular occasion. Women he's bedded who've used it as a reason to punish him. Women who may have been the means by which he punished himself.

Tony just snorts. "Who cares about their opinions? There's a very short list of people whose opinions I _do_ care about, and you're at the top of it." His hands slip down her body, catch behind her knees and lift until she's spread open below him. "And even then, there's some opinions of yours that are more important than others."

She shivers at the way he licks his lips. "Tony..."

He grins. "You're the one who said that you didn't want to rush."

"I also said I wanted to drive," she reminds him acerbically.

"Trust me, I'm definitely being driven by you." He stops any further commentary with his lips...though it's not as if she couldn't continue to speak to him if she wanted to. For a moment he wonders if he might be able to convince her to give him meeting briefs this way - it'd certainly keep his attention better, especially if he gets to kiss her while she was doing so. But then her hips shift under him and her body is so wet and so open that he just slides right in, and there's little he's thinking about anymore except how keep those surprised squeaks and satisfied moans coming out of her mouth.

"God, you are so _perfect_," he moans as he breaks the kiss for a moment. Her response is a thousand sensations in a thousand different places, all so intense that he nearly breaks right there. "Pepper," he moans a little in warning.

"_I'm driving_," she says a little insistently. "You're not the only one who's capable of playing dirty."

"Fine," he replies breathlessly before he rolls onto his back, bringing her with him. The motion thrusts him even deeper inside of her and he groans as he instinctively arches in search of more.

"Better," she says a little breathlessly. Then she tilts her hips a little, adjusting the angle. The result is that her next thrust draws a strangled gasp from both of them

"Oh...that's good," she whispers as her head falls back on her neck. She moves her hips experimentally against him, choked little "ah's" escaping from her throat with each twitch and roll.

"I...uhmmm...definitely agree with that. Though it's a little bit…confusing… from my perspective..." At her look of confusion he writhes. "I think I might be getting feedback from both of us."

"You don't like that?" She sounds a little skeptical.

"Didn't say that..." He reaches for the link. "But still, it's a little overwhelming…"

At the next dip of her hips she realizes he's feel not just what it's like to slide inside her, but to be entered at the same time. "Oh!" She stills, focusing on the dual sensations. It's literally breathtaking.

"As I was saying...it's _distracting_...going to need to learn to shield myself better or this will be finished regularly before it's even begun." She circles her hips and he grinds his teeth. "Do that again Potts, and I will put you on your back again."

"Think that would help?" But she's handling the shields now and she's _fascinated_ by this, by the feeling of sharing his body.

"Don't know...but at least I'd be able to do _something_..." He struggles against the mounting pressure that's building in his chest. Against a body and a mind that's being pushed toward their limits.

Pepper feels that too and she stops moving, she backs off the sensation a little without letting go entirely. Then she brushes just the tips of her fingers against his chest. It's an odd feeling that echoes, back, one that's pleasurable, but countered by a gentle thrumming sensation.

'The arc generator,' she realizes after a moment. 'It actually creates a constant humming vibration...like a second heartbeat only one that his body still hasn't completely adjusted to yet.'

Pepper touches her own chest as she can practically feel that hum between her breasts where months ago she'd felt his agony.

"It doesn't usually hurt anymore. Not like it constantly used to. Though sometimes too much physical exertion makes my chest start to throb and feel tight." The admission is awkward, an acknowledgement of his limitations.

'He needs to see a real doctor,' she knows in that moment. 'Or even a psychic healer who can say one way or another that his heart's recovering properly.'

And in the meantime, it's probably best not to push the limits too much.

Reluctantly, she lets her control over the shield slip, and as it had before, Tony's reasserts itself in her absence. They're alone again in their bodies again which makes her feel surprisingly lonely.

"Pepper?" His voice is a little confused. "I didn't say that we needed to stop..." He reaches out as if afraid that she's going to pull away. "I'm not crippled, though I'm sorry you've been stuck with a partner who's stuck with permanent hardware."

"That doesn't bother me except for as it pertains to your health." Pepper reaches for their bond again, this time loosening the "knot" she's put in it. There's still enough of a connection between them that she can feel his earlier urgency as it starts pulsing through him again.

In return he floods that same sensation back in her direction, washing away any concern with an almost comparable hunger. At the same time he does a little bit of 'sensory tweaking' of his own: phantom fingers trace the line of her shoulder blades and then the line of her collarbone.

She closes her eyes and focuses on the delicate sensation even as she starts moving on him again. For each thrust there's an answering touch somewhere - the back of her neck, the hollow of her throat, along the curves of her breasts...

She's getting near the end when his lips find the inside of her inner arm and the delicate nerve juncture just above her right elbow.

"Stark!" It's a protest that half amazement and half ticklish, and she feels him grin and her hips circle again.

"Come with me, Potts." He rolls them again, his hands propping her hips up as he sinks into her over and over. She gasps in surprise and loses the last of her control over their joint shielding. The bond surges in response, washing both of them in pure sensation and...joy.

This time she literally can't tell which one of them comes first, or who comes last for that matter. Things just combine and rebound over and over again.

When they finally do come fully back to themselves, he's literally limp right atop her. And her relaxation, as great as it is, is overwhelmed by the reality that unless he moves, she's not going to be able to breathe.

"You have to move or you're going to crush me," she murmurs into the ear that's right next to her lips.

He grumbles in protest, but manages to roll them onto their sides. The action frees him from her body though, and both of them whimper a little until he tucks her head firmly under his chin.

Pepper maintains just enough awareness that she can slip back through the threads of their bond to find that physical connection again. They're both tired and a little out of it, so all that's produced is a deeper sensation of both holding and being held. Of not being alone.

"You okay?" he murmurs into her hair.

She nods. "Just...I think this is what I've been looking for." He raises an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything, obviously waiting for a more specific explanation which she provides once she finds the right words. "There's no question when we're together like this about whether or not you're alright. I can _feel _it all. If I concentrate I can feel your heart beating, your lungs expanding and contracting." She presses her face deeper into his neck in a now customary signal that she's seeking comfort. "After all those months when you were gone, or of these months and waking up not knowing if you were alive or dead, you can't know what this means to me."

His arms tighten around her. "Pepper, I want you to move into the house with me. I know you value your personal space, but I just…we're both better off when we're actually sleeping, and I actually do when you're here." He makes the request about him, effectively taking the pressure off of her to appear vulnerable, despite the fact that she's the one trying to climb into his skin.

She wonders how long he's been deliberately or subconsciously making it safe for her to get what she needs without her having to ask him for it. It's something she's going to have to be both more grateful for and more aware of, to make sure that what's good for her is also good for him.

"Believe it or not, Tony, I'd already ruled out us trying to live apart from each other. For one thing, just thinking about going home right now - even for clean clothes - is enough to make me sick to my stomach."

"Does that same feeling linger if you know I'd be making the trip with you?" he questions a little intently.

She shakes her head. "No not really. Though it's a little humbling to realize I'm a thirty-five year old woman who needs what amounts to a security blanket."

"Pepper, you're not the only one who's having the issue. Though I think we need to talk to your dad about what exactly it means. Because when this first started I couldn't bear not to be in the same _room_, and now I could probably handle about as far as the security gate."

She winces and moves closer as if she honestly thinks he's going to try to prove it right this instant. "I just..." His hand moves down slightly, to cup her back. "I suspect that we put off dealing with it so long that...well I think it's going to take some time for the damage to heal." He chuckles softly. "Well you certainly have a new way to convince me to go to all of those board meetings, I'll say that much at least."

"Go myself?" She laughs a little despairingly, mainly because she's just realized the implications of all this. "Tony, what happens the next time you need to go somewhere as Ironman?"

"I don't know," he admits a little quietly. "That's part of why I need to talk to Malcolm."

"I think we probably need to get that part of it figured out fast."

"Trouble coming?" he questions softly, probably in reference to her more recent dreams.

When she doesn't answer he shrugs and tries to talk her into a better mood. "On the bright side, Pepper, I'm fairly certain that the bond can handle more distance. Your mom and dad seemed to even before theirs was cut."

"I don't know if theirs was as strong as ours," Pepper admits. "Or what effect it had on either of their minds or bodies. Though the way I remember it they were both always just a little underweight."

"The only way we'll find out is by trying. And again we need to talk to your father, since he at least has some experience that may be helpful to us."

She nods. "We can't live like this. And not just because of Ironman. Sometimes we just need to be in different places, like if you're meeting with investors for lunch and I'm in the office getting work done."

"My guess is we're going to have a range of effect. It's too soon yet to know exactly how big. That or we'll be able to handle the distraction of being apart for a certain length of time...though things will probably get interesting when we both finally get home."

Again she shudders, and her mind is filled with a bruised body that even her careful tending to seems to make worse. She's getting sucked back down into it, she realizes. Back down into the fear that's spawned her nightmares and that's based on things that are all too real. And it's ridiculous because Tony is here and alive and well and she can feel him with every sense available to her.

"Hey...hey hey _hey._" His hand tilts her chin up at the same time his lips cover hers.

She focuses on him, on Tony's complete _lack_ of fear. This is an adventure for him in many ways still, and she's only starting to understand that just because he feels that way doesn't mean he doesn't see or understand the possible dangers. It's just that he sees a destination that's worth the dangers that go with the trip.

"Sorry," she murmurs against his lips. "It's just really fresh still. Just two nights ago I was waking up screaming every few hours." It's a little bit of a struggle, but Pepper manages to let the images flow from her mind so that she can concentrate on the living, breathing, healthy man in her arms. "By the way, I totally give you permission to snap me out of things like that any time you feel the need to."

Tony winks. "Well if I _have_ to." There's enough naughtiness in his tone for her to roll her eyes. Still, underneath there's a more serious promise: just like she's now guarding his back, he's going to do his damndest to return the favor.

And that's as much as anyone can ask. She studies him a moment, then kisses his forehead. "So what do you think, should we go track down Malcolm?"

"In a few minutes." Tony answers. "Right now I'm just enjoying the now. The chance to just be."

And that Pepper _completely_ understands.

"So let's take a nap," she tells him gently. "I'll tell my father to order a pizza or something."

Malcolm was downstairs meditating himself from the feel of it, and she very much doubted that he'd mind.


	10. Chapter 11

"So...uhm...how long is he going to be doing that?" Tony's words are half disbelief and half caution. He's been standing in the doorway to the living room for at least the last fifteen minutes.

Pepper shrugs. "You'd have to ask him. Though as a child I think the longest I remember seeing him do so what about an hour and a half." She starts ladling soup into bowls before retrieving crackers from the cupboard and cheese from the refrigerator. "To be honest, we should probably try and call him up out of it. This soup isn't going to stay warm in smaller bowls indefinitely. Just walk up and tap his shoulder gently."

Tony nods, a little awkwardly. Then moves from the doorway to crouch in front of Malcolm. "Okay this is creepy, Potts. Get me a mirror. I'm not even certain he's still breathing."

Pepper rolls her eyes. "As I told you, Tony, he's just meditating."

"Meditating?" Tony says the word with great speculation. "As in sitting in a strange position for hours and hours and chanting nonsense while the more logical course would have been to just admit you need a nap?"

"Actually Tony, the language I'm using in my head is Navaho. And the elder who taught it to me might take objection to it being referred to as nonsense. Though to be fair Swahili - which I normally use instead - does sound pretty ridiculous some days."

Malcolm Keith-Behyr speaks without opening his eyes, and then he raises both of his arms, stretching them out above his head and interlocking his fingers.

"He's awake," Tony calls back to the kitchen.

"Food in three minutes. Now go wash your hands," Pepper hollers right back.

"Yes, Mom!" Both men respond simultaneously...then smirk at each other as Malcolm finishes his stretching.

"How's your head?" Malcolm asks, as he slowly climbs to his feet.

"If I say terrible, will it forestall the lecture Pepper's warned me is coming?" Tony shrugs. "I'm better after some rest, though still a little shaky."

Malcolm nods. "You stressed yourself dangerously. You are aware of that, right?" The man's face is passive for the most part, but it makes Tony shift uncomfortably. "And that the consequences if you had injured yourself would have fallen on more than just you."

'Roughly translated - you could have hurt my daughter you fuckwit' "I... I overestimated myself. I didn't realize there'd be trouble until I was already in it. I'll try not to let it happen again."

Malcolm raises an eyebrow. "That was an actual admission of fault and a genuine apology. Congratulations, you've cut that inevitable lecture down by at least fifteen minutes."

Tony glances back to the kitchen. "Thanks, I think. Look, do me a favor and check on Pepper for me, please? She 'feels' okay, but I don't have much to go on there but instinct and after the last few days..." He shifts uncomfortably leaving the statement unfinished…

Malcolm closes his eyes and tilts his head in the direction of the kitchen. "Her aura's a whole lot less muddy, though it's still chaotic. She's worrying over some things is my guess."

Tony frowns. "Worrying about what in particular? I thought the crisis was finally passed."

Malcolm opens his eyes again. "I'd have to push to learn specifics, and she's asked me to respect her privacy and stay out of her head. I am trying to honor that."

Tony chews his lip. "But she's physically okay at least, right? You can tell me that much can't you, without pushing too far

Pepper calls from the kitchen. "If you want to know how I'm feeling, Stark, why don't you just come in here and _ask _me?"

Tony jumps like a scalded cat. "Oh crap." His expression is one Malcolm's intimately familiar with - the look of a man half afraid of a woman.

Malcolm smiles. "For what it's worth, Tony, she reads more as amused right now than she does as angry. After all it's not like you're asking me for anything unforgivable like the pictures of her at the commune when she was three and chasing Tommy all around the corn-field trying to catch him and kiss him."

Pepper comes to the doorway. "You two do realize that I can hear you down in the kitchen. yes? And Malcolm, think real hard about who has more blackmail-able stories before you go any further..."

She motions with one hand, "Now come on Dr Phil and Oprah. I don't know about you, but I'm starving right now. Let's eat."

'You don't always tell me the whole truth,' Tony whispers at her, mainly because it's hard to summon more "volume" than that right now. He hadn't been kidding when he'd told Malcolm he was feeling better, but still not at one hundred percent. If this is how it feels being the receptive member of a memory sharing he's almost a little afraid of what it will be like to be the one from the revealing end.

He gets up from the floor a little stiffly and makes his way into the kitchen. The soup Pepper's put at three spots at the table smells absolutely heavenly.

"So...has she always been this good a cook?" Tony mumbles around his first spoonful of chicken and egg noodles. "Because I've never seen indication of this kind of culinary talent before."

Pepper snorts. "My job is to run your office Tony, not make stuff like strawberry trifle or triple chocolate cheesecake that will only make you _more_ hyper."

"You make triple chocolate cheesecake?" Tony asks the question almost reverently. The image he sends Pepper of where and how he'd like to eat said cheesecake has her glad she's facing the stove. She delivers the equivalent of a mental thump to the back of his neck in warning.

"If you really want to know, then cooking is my method of meditating when I'm denied access to my office." Once more under control, Pepper turns away from the stove, bringing a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches with her. The look she shoots Tony is meaningful in an if-I-don't-get-to-my-phone-soon-I-will-start-kicking-asses sort of way.

Tony snorts. "Someone's going into professional withdrawal. A little too long without your Crackberry, Potts? Because they probably have a therapy group for that."

Malcolm snickers as he swallows another spoonful of his own soup. Pepper glares at both of them as she sits and serves herself. "Big talk from a guy who normally has to order in if he wants something hot to eat and a man who's incapable of even making toast."

Her father snickers. "I'm not quite that bad these days, Ginny. Merilee as me trained to handle sandwiches, spaghetti and eggs. I can also successfully fry bacon." There's a...warmth...to Malcolm's voice that catches Pepper's attention.

"Merilee?" Tony looks a little confused. "You know, I've heard you say that name once before, though I'm not really all that sure when. So is this woman exactly?"

Pepper's eyes narrow slightly as she studies her father. "She's one of the few original founders who is still living at the commune. Back when we were growing up she and Malcolm and Mom were sort of the hippie three stooges."

Malcolm shakes his head. "Not exactly. Merilee was your mom's older cousin. She knew her the longest and so was the least put off by her tendency toward drama. She's actually in charge now...and the commune has technically been converted to more of a ranch. There's still an organic garden yes, managed by her and a few other residents, but it's just for eating now. They've taken to stabling local horses, giving riding lessons, and even breeding some really beautiful palominos as a way to support themselves."

Pepper stirs her soup with her spoon, drawing meaningless, invisible patterns. "I haven't been near a horse in years," she admits. "Actually...I don't think road at all after Mom and I left. Well okay, except for maybe the occasional tired out nag at summer camp."

"Do you miss it?" Malcolm asks her a bemusedly. Then he smiles a little bit wistfully. "You sure were obsessed with the horses when you were a little bit younger. I'm surprised you weren't trampled before your seventh birthday with the way you kept trying to sneak into the pens with the yearlings when no one was looking."

Pepper grimaces. "I nearly was trampled once...though I don't think you were there at the time."

She'd actually snuck outside one day while her father was traveling for one reason or another. Her mother had been meditating - or maybe reading. Something other than painting. And her eight year old hyperactivity just hadn't been able to sit still and watch her anymore.

So instead she'd slipped outside for almost an hour, exploring the barn before she'd climbed under the electric fence and tried to make friends with the commune's newest resident: a bad tempered Arabian who had tried repeatedly to bite her.

Merilee had noticed her moments before the horse attempted to trample her. The other woman had rescued her, at the cost of a serious kick to her left thigh.

She hadn't blinked though - hadn't struck out at the animal in anger. Instead she'd just stood there and _looked_ at the horse… for almost a minute. Pepper had been astounded by the way the stallion backed down, actually dropping its head and backing away like it knew it had done something wrong, and was making apology.

Merilee had patted its' nose and motioned it to the feeding trough, then turned and picked up the still shaking little girl, limping out of the paddock and into a people only section of the barn. "So what was that about?" the woman had asked her calmly once she'd settled them both down on top of the feed bin - Pepper clinging and crying as she sat in her lap.

"I'm sorry. He…he just looked so sad." Pepper had confessed through tears to the dark haired woman. "I…I only wanted him to be happy again. I just wanted to help."

Merilee had hugged her hard. Even now Pepper remembers even how she'd smelled at that moment: like horses, sunshine and comfort all at once.

"Sweetie, it's good that you care about others - be they two or four footed. But we have rules about the horses for a _reason_. What happened today is exactly why you don't get to go into any paddocks without an adult there for supervision. I know you are sorry, and I'll let it go this once, but if I ever catch you doing it again I willpunish you just like Tommy. That means a spanking. Do you understand?"

Pepper had and hadn't even been particularly threatened. She'd known at that moment that she would never deliberately disobey another one of this women's rules again. Her mother though, had walked in looking for her at exactly that moment, and started hollering at Merilee for what she'd called unwanted 'parental interference.'

She'd called the woman a fascist and a child abuser while Merilee sat with the still clinging child in her lap.

Merilee hadn't even blinked at the other woman's diatribe. Instead she'd waited for the screaming to stop, then set Pepper gently down on the floor. "Honey do me a favor, okay? Take that bucket by the door there and go fill it with corn from the garden. It sounds really good for supper doesn't it?"

Pepper had flown to honor her wishes, both relieved and contrite. When she'd returned from the garden though her mother and Merilee had both gone off into town, leaving Eli to help her shuck corn and prepare it for the table.

When the women came back four hours later, Merilee had been wearing a cast: the kick had cause a hairline fracture.

And for awhile at least, her stewing mom had actually paid attention to her daughter.

"How is Merilee?" Pepper's shocked at the sheer amount of time that's passed since she's thought about the commune in any sort of good way. She hadn't even remembered the incident with the Arabian until Malcolm brought the horses up, but now it's leaving a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. The memory of her mother's inattention is now painfully familiar, but Merilee's kindness is something she'd completely forgotten.

Which was sad really, because it wasn't the only story like it. While a lot of the people who'd lived there at the commune had been typical hippies looking for a place to live out ideologies and practice their drug habits, there'd also been a large number of genuine earth children - people who lived like hippies but without the weed.

"How is Merilee ever?" Malcolm's amused voice intrudes on her brooding. "She's Merilee Tate: the reincarnated earth mother, lover of gardens, bare feet and every imaginable kind of horseflesh" Malcolm shakes his head. "She's like the sea. Good luck ever getting it to change its tides. I keep trying to convince her to come and travel with me awhile. I mean it's been almost thirty five years since Andrew died and she's left the commune maybe a handful of times. She just laughs when I suggest it though. She says she is what she is, and there's no point to fight it."

Pepper's smile turns a little sad. She can _totally_ understand the other woman's point of view.

"Andrew was her husband?" Tony asks very softly. Underneath the table he finds and squeezes Pepper's free right hand. She wonders if he's picking up on her general sense of melancholy.

Malcolm shakes his head. "Andrew Capelli was her fiancé... and her boy's father. He was a soldier who died during the war - before Tommy was even born."

Tony blinks at that. "A peace child was engaged to a draftee?"

Malcolm snorts. "She wasn't quite the usual hippie. She's just very down to earth. Her family actually originally own half the commune's property."

"Besides, the draft didn't care about who they got, just as long as they got more soldiers," Pepper mutters. This perhaps more than anything reveals just how she was brought up.

Malcolm nods. "True…though in this case Andrew was proud to be called up. He never even thought of running or trying to get out of it. He was studying to be a doctor and didn't think there were more deserving recipients of his skill that those literally risking life and limb for their country. He was a conscientious objector, who dealt with patients but and flat out refused to pull his gun if he could suture instead."

"Which is probably why he died." Pepper points out a little cynically. "And left his son without a father and Merilee alone." She's just not sure if she considers that courage or absolute cowardice. And she doesn't know why, but it just makes her so _bitter_ -

Pepper looks up and sees Malcolm studying his food and Tony's avoiding her eyes.

'Mom didn't leave Malcolm a choice when she took me, and Tony's dad was making the guns for a war few supported.' Pepper wants to thump her head on the table. Instead she takes a moment to strengthen her shields. She doesn't know if she's transmitting anything, but she's sure as hell picking things up.

Malcolm sighs. "You're entitled to your feelings, Pepper, even if I don't agree with all of them. Considering the last few days there's really no point in saying that your mom and I both royally fucked ourselves and you up."

Tony takes a little longer to respond, but when he does it's with ironic humor. "My Dad spent most of his time feeling guilty about the A bomb. Anything after the 1960s...well I guess that familial guilt falls to me."

Malcolm snorts. "Yes, because you invented man's hatred. And the selfishness that makes people decide that human beings are less valuable than money."

Tony shoots him a look. "You don't understand."

"Don't I? I've been all over Africa with the peace corps Anthony. And while I was there I watched people who hated each other so much that when they couldn't buy weapons they resorted to poisoning water supplies, raping children and fighting each other with sticks. I can't say I'm a big fan of weapons, but in my opinion they're like fire - the same thing that can kill in can be used to protect."

Tony knows that. Pepper knows that Tony intellectually comprehends and acknowledges that truth. It's just that life becomes different when you've seen first hand what weapons you created can do to human flesh and you also know when those weapons are in the wrong hands, they're used on innocents.

Tony squeezes back, but doesn't speak for a moment. Then he looks over at Malcolm. "Okay for the record, if you're a typical 'hippie' - I'm actually kind of disappointed."

Malcolm lets out a sharp burst of laughter. "What's the matter, Stark, I'm too well rounded for you? Try getting to my age boy, with my talents, without learning life isn't always black or white."

"Boy!" Tony raises and eyebrow. "I'm 36 years old. I think I'm out of diapers at least."

"Maybe physically. Metaphorically?" Malcolm snorts. "You both have a ways to go before I feel any kind of confident in letting you loose on an unsuspecting world. Right now you're just as likely to save each other's lives as you are to get yourselves committed to a psychiatric ward."

Pepper wrinkles her nose. "You're always so comforting."

Malcolm shrugs. "No what I am, is in need of backup." Then he crosses his arms. "Which is why, if you can manage it - and yes I'm aware that you also have a business to run - I'd like to kidnap both of you for about two or three weeks."

"Kidnapping?" Pepper says suspiciously. "That sounds like you have a destination in mind."

"I do." Malcolm grins. "Merilee has invited us out to spend some time at Rohan."

Tony snorts, though it's with the delight of a fanboy. "Rohan? As in Middle Earth 'Rohan?'"

Pepper laughs in spite of herself. "Well it does have lots of horses. Merilee's totally addicted to the Lord of the Rings still, isn't she, Dad?"

"Yet she has yet to see any of the movies yet. I'm bringing all three box sets along with me," Malcolm crows, obviously pleased with himself.

Pepper sighs as feels her amusement slip away. "I don't know, Malcolm..." This doesn't strike her as the best idea. She's still struggling to adapt to their new circumstances in familiar surroundings. If she tries coping with all this someplace else, she doesn't know if she'll sink or swim.

She honestly doesn't know if it's worth the risk.

Malcolm sighs, apparently sensing her distress. "Pepper, there's something you don't know because I've never told you before. Merry has two distinct gifts. The first is with animals, which you already know. The second…well how do you think she knew you needed her in that paddock all those years ago?"

Pepper blinks. "She has foresight?"

Malcolm nods. "At early the same level as you I am guessing. It's probably one of the reasons that she prefers to stay where she is. The quiet life makes it easier for her to cope. She can help you Pepper. In this she can help you more than I ever can."

"Com'on, Pep." Tony's voice is serious. "Let's go to Rohan. It'll be the only way either of us will stay focused long enough to make real progress. Because if we're here, you _know_ there'll be a million distractions." Tony's eyes darken slightly, "Just for a moment be practical, Pepper," he urges her softly. "If this were anyone else caught up in our dilemma, what would you encourage them to do?"

It's unfair of him to ask her to be practical when he's deliberately playing it against her instincts. "Fine. But we're going to have to compromise on work. Because I'm not just leaving it hanging. However if you give me two days I can get the old system up. Once that's in place, I can essentially run your company from my cell phone."

Her mind provides the images to explain what she means by "the old system." He suddenly sees her, striding through the corridors at SI head quarters, handling his share of the workload by herself more efficiently than she does when she has to handle it for him. There's a flicker of faces accompanied by titles that informs him of what each person had been in charge of and if he looks closely at them he can see how that person had delegated duties.

He's absolutely stunned by the complexity of the web she'd woven to keep his company intact while he'd been held captive in Afghanistan.

He swallows hard because he also sees what she doesn't...that the system she'd used in his absence had worked, but only as it had caused her tremendous emotional and mental strain. It was no wonder, after he'd gotten back stateside that the bond had suddenly tried to exert itself so forcefully.

"I...I can live with that. Though we could also set up a satellite uplink to Jarvis so you could bring your laptop along if that would be easier."

There's an instantaneous change to the web in her mind the moment he speaks. He can see it shifting, growing, tension being distributed more comfortably along more tethers. With a computer she can keep in touch with more people in the same amount of time and he can see how she instantly allows for it.

"Two hours a day tops," she murmurs to herself.

"Yes, and no having to chase me down or get me to meetings." Tony grins, "I really think this is the right thing to do."

"So...then I call Merilee and say we'll be there in three days?" Malcolm asks a little bit cautiously. "I'll book us tickets to the regional airport and Tommy will probably come and pick us up in the pickup. We'll simply call when we arrive."

"Sounds good." Pepper braces herself on the counter and forces herself to pull it together. 'Damn it.' All it takes is one mention of the commune by her father, and she's acting like the child she'd been when she left it.

"Malcolm...Dad, I-" She sighs and quietly says, "Thank you for your help. I really do appreciate it."

Malcolm nods, then he looks at Tony. "Would you mind leaving the two of us alone together for a minute? I just have some father daughter stuff we should probably talk about briefly since we are going back to the commune and not everyone there knows the truth about Pepper's paternity…"

"Yeah, sure." Tony actually looks little concerned, but he has also learned to respect this particular tone out of Malcolm, because after a quick confirming nod that it's okay from Pepper he carries his things over to the sink and drops a quick kiss on her cheek. "I'm gonna go down to my shop, 'k? Let me know if you need me."

"Okay," Pepper replies. She doesn't watch him go. Instead she rinses his dishes and puts them next to hers in the dishwasher.

Malcolm waits until she finishes. "Are there any of those brownies left?" When she nods he smiles affectionately. "Sit down and eat one with me?"

Pepper's not sure she really wants to, but he's done nothing to deserve outright rejection, and so she agrees.

Malcolm waits until she's nibbling at one corner. "So…okay I might have fudged on the topic for discussion, but I was trying to respect your privacy. I know you hate when I pry, so I'm going to try just going at things directly. You're obviously uneasy at the thought of going home. I'd like to know why, if that's okay."

She chuckles humorlessly. "Well, part of it is you're asking me to take Tony Stark - _the_ Tony Stark - to a _commune_. Which is both laughable and terrifying. I have images of him deciding that pigs really are as smart as everyone claims and then turning the west wing into a pig sty. Literally."

Malcolm laugh. "That's easily fixed. If he starts making noises about something like that, just ask Merilee to make him muck out their pens for a couple of days. I promise, he'll get over the idea very quickly."

Malcolm's smiling, but he's also waiting, a tactic she's endured before. He's going to sit there and watch her calmly until she spills the rest.

Of course it would be easier to get indignant if he weren't also right. Like it or not, she needs to talk about this.

"The second part of it is that it requires the idea of actually going somewhere with Tony. You're going to laugh, but it makes all of this so much more real. Going away someplace where you're sleeping away from home is something that couples do. It's freaking me out, I guess."

"You've never traveled with the man before?"

"As his assistant yes. But no, not as his lover." Pepper sighs and feel herself blushing a little. "Okay I know that this is going to sound childish. But this all…it's a little overwhelming…" She shrugs. "Almost nothing in my life feels familiar anymore."

"To much change too fast can be overwhelming," her father admits. "Is there anything we can do to try and make you feel more at ease?"

Pepper looks a little wry then, "Frankly recent events are making me wonder if you and Tony haven't already been _too _patient with me."

Her father cocks his head, obviously confused by that statement, and Pepper forces herself to explain "Ever since this all started you've been worried about and helping and pacifying me at every turn, but I'm not the one who's currently at the most risk of damage." She looks towards the basement steps and chew on her lower lip. "Malcolm, how long has it been since you've done _a real_ 'sight' check of Tony?"

Malcolm reaches out across the table, and squeezes her hand in what she suspects is supposed to be reassurance. "About fifteen minutes ago, actually. His shields are recovering from the strain of shielding you the way he did, but emotionally at least he seems to be doing pretty damn well."

Pepper sighs, "I'm not so sure about that, you know. Some of the stuff I saw in his head when we laid down...well it was pretty disturbing." She pauses then presses forward. "He can hide his own discomfort really, really well when he decides he needs to..."

"Can you be more specific?" Malcolm's voice is calm, and understanding, but also concerned. He wants more information.

It pains Pepper to do so - she doesn't like violating Tony's privacy, but she confides in her father what happened when Tony put on his suit in his workshop. "He's so stressed out he's got to be fully guarded before he relaxes at all."

Malcolm nods. "Which is normal under the circumstances. Ginny, I don't know if you know this, but he thought you were dying before the bod cemented. That kind of trauma to any untrained empath will take awhile to dissipate. Unless I miss my guess he's playing it cool because he's lieterally torn between the desire to give you space and the far less logical need to be literally all over you."

"Oh God." She blushes. "Can we not talk about our sex lives?"

Malcolm chuckles. "Who says I'm talking about sex? I'm talking about simple touch. Right now, Pepper he's probably just hungry for the chance to hold you every chance he can get."

Pepper sighs. 'Tell that to our over-reactive libidos.' "Was it...hard...at first, when you and Mom were in different rooms after your bond cemented?"

Malcolm frowns. "Hard how? Are you implying that for you and Tony it's currently physically _painful_?"

She shrugs a little. "If we're apart long enough, yes. Right now it's more a kind of...pressure...like the bond is stretching like a bungee chord. It is capable of expanding, but the greater the stretch the greater the urge is felt by both of us for the missing party to come back." Pepper swallows around a huge lump in her throat. "And that's going to cause issues, Dad. Sooner or later he's going to grow resentful, because he won't be able to go on missions...he won't be able to concentrate on what's happening right in front of him well enough to do so safely."

Malcolm, damn him, seems to pick up on the relief that though brings. "I'd think you'd be glad to keep him close to home...I mean it's already been establish that you're having nightmares concerning his safety."

"I do feel glad." And she feels guilty about it too. "But Mal, it's not fair that I feel that way. Because I can't ask him to stop being what he feels he needs to be. It's not fair to ask him to give up doing what he feels his conscious is demanding that he do." She chews her lips. "He's being reasonable about it for now, but eventually he'll lose patience or worse, he'll wind up resenting both the bond and me for tying him down through it."

And that, Pepper realizes, is her greatest concern. That this path can only lead to resentment and accusations... Because if that's inevitable, then she's fucking getting her tubes tied. She'll be damned if she leaves any chance of putting a child through that misery.

"Ginny, look at me." Malcolm's hand comes out to cover hers. He's got the tone to his voice she associates with the use of his truth powers, and the tone makes her shiver a little

"Mal, I..."

He interrupts her. "No. No talking. For once I want you to just _listen _to me."

She does and is shocked by the sheer determination she sees her father's eyes.. "This bond between you and Anthony will be only what the two of you decide to make together, Virginia. You're not you mother or me."

"I wish I believed that," she murmurs. "But right now there's just so many similarities. I think about you and Mom near the end and I..." She shudders convulsively. "I don't to do that to myself, and I really don't want to do that to him."

"Then don't. Talk about your fears instead of bottling them up. Because I can tell you for a fact there's almost nothing the man downstairs right now wouldn't do for you... Pepper, he's dying to comfort you. I guarantee he'd be willing to listen." Her father's voice is soft. "Look, why don't I give you some time to yourself now. I know this has all been pretty overwhelming. If you need me again today, you know where to find me. If not, well I expect you'll call tomorrow when you're ready for some company, okay?"

Pepper nods silently, accepting the kiss to her cheek her father presses on her before he leaves the room. It occurs to her that she needs to tell him how glad she really is to see him, circumstances not withstanding, but the words just don't make it out of her mouth. She thinks he might know, but resolves to tell him the next time she sees him. Right now it's too hard to even contemplate going after him.

She doesn't know how long she sits at the kitchen table at loose ends before she pushes herself back and starts wandering through the house. After five minutes she can't remember why it was so important not to go downstairs. Maybe because Tony's garage is where this all started falling apart.

Right now it also holds the man is who has the best chance of helping her put herself back together again.

The cement steps are cold under her bare feet as she slowly descends. Sooner or later they're going to have to go to her apartment so she can get some clean clothes. And considering they're going to be leaving soon, sooner is probably better.

"You alright?" A quiet voice comes from over near Tony's workbench. The hoarseness in his voice, though, makes Pepper sure he's fully aware of the turmoil in her mind and the sourness in her stomach. Still, Tony is trying very hard to respect who she is at her center - which means allowing her at least a semblance of her space, and privacy. It doesn't stop him, though, from sending subtle but undeniable waves of support in her direction down the link.

"No, not really." Her smile is lopsided as she stands near the door to the garage. She looks at him for several long seconds, and feels the knot in her stomach tighten further. "Do you think we have a future, Tony?" She barely whispers the question. Nonetheless it gets him to set down his tool and turn to face her, crossing his arms and tilting his head, to study her carefully.

"I know that I want for us to have one...that I'm willing to fight for it, but that's all that I can promise. As for guarantees...I'm sorry Pepper, but foresight isn't my gift."

"I'm not sure I'd call it mine, either." Pepper rubs clammy hands against her thighs. "I don't know how to do this, Tony. Not just the whole bond thing, but a relationship where both partners aren't sniping at each other all the time. The thought that we could wind up hating each other before this is over absolutely scares the hell out of me."

Tony tilts his head. "You think we're going to end up resenting each other?" He asks her quietly. When she nods he tilts up one side of his mouth, "May I ask why?"

"You don't think our different personalities are going to get on each other's nerves?" She asks the question absolutely seriously.

"Pepper, no offense but if that was going to be a backbreaker I'd think that it would have come up by this point. Tell me this - how long now have we worked closely together?"

She blinks in confusion... "Uhm, almost ten years." She isn't sure she gets his point.

"And during that time how often have we really been at each other's throats? Over something we can't simply sit down and talk out? Or is our being lovers somehow going to negate our entire past history of good communication?"

She sighs a little, conceding the point, and moves farther into the room, somehow avoiding Tony while moving closer to him. "I...can we go to my house? Get some stuff to bring back here? I'm a little sick of the same couple of outfits - it'd be nice to have a few more of my things."

Besides, the mansion is beginning to feel a little overwhelming in and of itself. Her house is smaller than his, the spaces if not more familiar, then at least filled with things she touches daily - the quiet comfort of home.

Maybe Tony senses her homesickness, maybe he's sick of the mansion himself, because he nods with a smile. "Sure. It'll be nice to stretch our legs... Besides I'm craving ice cream and we're out. Do you want to take one of the fleet or are you more comfortable driving your Audi?"

Normally the offer to drive one of his sports cars would be enough to stir at least a little excitement. Today though she just shrugs, "My car has a trunk. We'll be bringing stuff back, so it's probably the better option, I think."

He nods. "All right then. Just thought you might appreciate the offer. Let me get my coat from the shop closet and we can get going. You might want to borrow a sweatshirt or something from my closet, though. The weather man says a cold front is currently moving in."

"Okay." She ventures close enough to touch the back of his hand, but before he can offer more, she's gone, heading towards the stairs and hopefully to his room to grab something.

She's waiting for him in the living room once he gathers his things. As he comes up the stairs he catches her looking out the window and holding a fold of a familiar looking sweatshirt to her nose. He can see her shoulders rise as she takes a deep breath and when she turns around he recognizes his favorite MIT top. The one that probably hasn't been washed in weeks and undoubtedly smells heavily of him... For some reason the sight heartens him, and he smiles a little as he motions her to the door. "So if you get to drive, does that mean I get to pick the music? For trip there at least?"

"Would it actually stop you if I said no?" she asks in a mock exasperated voice as she walks towards him.

He doesn't bother to reply to the jibe, instead his expression just grows serious. "Pepper, are you sure you're good to drive both there and back? Because right now I'm still feeling pretty overstretched from earlier...and I'm not thinking I'll be a reliable back up driver until I've gotten another nap at least.."

"Yes, I can drive just fine, Tony. Not at the manic speeds you prefer maybe..." He holds the door open for her and she steps through easily.

He snorts. "Pepper, I'm quite aware when you want to you can give everyone from me to Mario Andretti a run for their money."

The light of the sun is dimming as it starts to set, but the glare is still enough to make his eyes water fiercely. Pepper turns on the heat as the car starts up, and tries to ignore how Tony immediately reaches for the stereo. "Not too loud, Tony."

He nods a little. Turns it up to about a third his normal preference. He spends the rest of the trip for the most part silent, trying to give her space to quiet her mind and hopefully heart.

When they finally pull up to her cottage size bungalow he leans forward in his seat, studying the front yard with genuine interest. "Wow - it really spruced up nice. The yard especially. I don't remember there being this many plants here the first time I visited."

"I garden on the weekends when there's time," Pepper admits after a moment. "Though nothing too complicated...stuff that for the most part needs only the occasional watering, weeding or triming."

"It's nice," Tony says, simply and again. "My mom always liked green - the house I grew up in even had a herb garden. I still think of her, truthfully, every time I smell basil or onion..."

Pepper gets a image as he speaks...a little boy kneeling next to a slightly obese but beautiful woman, who's crinkling a handful of leaves right beneath his nose. "This Tony... _This_ is the smell of all good tasting things."

She can almost smell the sharp herbal scent, but the memory fades. Moments later Pepper blinks as she finds herself staring at her front yard.

She can't help herself from reaching over and giving Tony's hand a squeeze in consolation. Because though the memory is good, there's a fair amount of bittersweetness mixed in.

He smiles a little and squeezes back. "If you would like to, you're welcome to bring any plants you want with you to the mansion. I'd have more of them already there myself already, but I have a semi-regular black thumb."

Her smile is halfhearted because the words are tinged with a hard reality - she's not just staying over at Tony's for a little while. She's going to actually be moving in.

Another thing that she really hasn't had any say in.

She keeps that thought tightly shielded, so Tony's next question brings her head up in shock. "Pepper, would it be easier for you, if we stay here at your house instead of at the mansion? Not during work hours of course, but for in the evenings? Because if you'd relax more here, I honestly don't object."

She blinks at him for a few seconds, before attempting a reply. "I...I really don't know. I'm just...nothing's ever easy, you know? And right now I feel like I'm overreacting to everything. I think I'm overtired," she mumbles as she rubs her head.

His hand comes up cautiously, before settling on the back of her neck. "Okay. And for the record I'm not saying you have to choose right now. I'm just saying that...well it's not exactly fair is it, to ask you to make all the sacrifices? This place is your HOME, and I know that. Some things may be changing, but that doesn't mean you have to give everything that you care about up, alright? Because that wouldn't be fair to ask of anyone."

He leans over just enough to kiss her cheek gently. "Right now I just want you to do whatever is going to make you feel most comfortable. Hell, if you're really that tired, let's go in and nap before we pack and go back. I'm fighting a headache myself, so it'd do us both good to lay down for awhile."

And that's not just temptation, that's utter relief. That's something she wants so badly, she's surprised by how eagerly her body signals its affirmation.

"I'd like that." She pulls her keys out of the ignition and opens her door. He climbs out after she does, and follows her up the front walk, waiting patiently as she unlocks the door.

The front entry is open and full of light. The only ornamentation is a coat tree and a large potted plant in one corner. Tony sits on a small bench beside the door and tugs off both his shoes. Pepper toes hers off, considers removing the sweatshirt and decides against it. It's snuggly and it smells deliciously of Tony.

"Is there room for me to share the bed?" Tony asks her quietly. "Cause I'll crash out on the couch, if I'm gonna end up crushing you or anything."

"There's plenty of room, and what makes you think I dislike being 'crushed?'" she asks as she takes his hand and leads him towards the bedroom.

He chuckles softly. "I'm just trying to give you your space if you need it. We're all entitled, occasionally at least, to some quiet and privacy." Her room is done in dark shades of blue and purple - there's an Oriental style hand painted fan on the wall and a small, flowing fountain set into one of the corners. He's so tired that his eyes pass over the bed with the wrought iron and cherrywood bedstead that he'd seen before in her mind, dismissing it as nothing more than a place to sleep. "_Nice_..." He murmurs, letting her pick her preferred side of the bed before sliding in on the other.

"Thank you." She rolls into his side immediately, sighing softly as she squirms around a little. Finally she moves his arm and pushes at his hip until he's arranged to her satisfaction. His only response is a contented snuffling sound as he buries his nose in her hair. And then he lets his eyes drift shut and soaks in the steady rise and fall of her breathing

"You're welcome," he murmurs back a moment or so later.


	11. Chapter 12

A scarecrow dressed in what Tony assumes is African garb stands silent in the middle of the dirt road.

It waits beyond the main gate, in a riot of red, orange and yellow. The sight is so startling against the fields in the background that it takes them a moment to realize it's also holding a sign in its arms. "Welcome home. It's about damn time. We need corn, potatoes and snow peas to go with the pot roast for dinner..."

The message is accompanied by several baskets, two shovels and a bucket full of what looks like bottled water. Malcolm makes a squawking protest about the 'abuse of Samburu artifacts' before he climbs over the back wheel well to retrieve the pile of tools.

Merilee's son - who'd been the one to meet them at the small, local airport - snorts... "That's Mom all right. Anything to get out of digging potatoes."

Tony shrugs, not really minding either way. The day is warm and bright, though not particularly hot. He's definitely glad he took Pepper's advice to dress casually, since he's currently sitting on in the back of a Ford '82 pickup truck on some hay bales.

Malcolm snorts, shifting a little in his seat "Way I remember it, Tom, *you* were the one who always hated digging potatoes. Which was a little ironic considering how many you of them you could eat in one sitting..."

Thomas laughes, "Yeah well don't point fingers, Renny. You were also pretty fond of them yourself..."

Pepper finally speaks – in any method – for the first time since they'd disembarked the plane. She's been studying the horizon for the past twenty minutes - though Tony's not sure whether the landscape is actually what she's been seeing. The edge of her lips curl up in a genuine smile as she looks at her father. "I can't believe that old scarecrow's survived out here for this long..."

"Oh, it hasn't." Pepper has to pull her hand out of Tony's in order to catch the basket Malcolm tosses to her. "However, after you and Thomas both left for college, Merilee decided to resurrect the tradition of having someone at the front gates to greet visitors." Tony gets passed a bucket, and the shovels rattle in the bed as Malcolm tosses them in and then climbs back up to rest against the tailgate.

"Hey it's fitting – that thing is definitely our mascot. Besides, you only get one chance to make a memorable first impression," grins the woman sitting beside Malcolm. She's got a shock of dark blond hair, and a deep, ruddy tan.

"I take it, then, that you don't have the same objections to a little grunt work?" Tony asks her, amused.

Theresa Spiegler shakes her head. "Nah, we all reap the benefits of the garden, we can all share the load of tending to it." Her expression turns sober. "Besides, harvesting in particular's not easy work and Merilee's already spent more time on her feet than she should have this week."

The statement brings Malcolm and Pepper's heads around, and Malcolm raises an eyebrow at the admission. "You almost make it sound like she's injured or sick or something." He's greeted by silence. The other ranch residents trade a whole silent conversation between them, and Malcolm's voice turns stern. "Okay, what is no one telling me?"

Thomas groans and Theresa clears her throat. "Look, she wanted this kept quiet, okay? You know she hates when people fuss. Not long after your last visit, Mal, Meri came down with some kind of nasty opportunistic virus…"

"She claimed it was a bad case of the flu at first," injected Thomas, sounding just the tiniest bit defensive. "And it took us quite awhile to realize it was something more serious than that..."

"What does her doctor think is wrong?" Pepper finally asks, since Malcolm has gone very quiet.

"All he'll say for sure is that whatever it was severely weakened her cardiovascular system…and effected her appetite. Other than that? Well, he's trying to get her to go to Omaha for a few weeks to see a specialist to get more information."

Malcolm finally speaks again, "Trying to get her to go? As opposed to succeeding?"

"She's been a little resistant to the idea. Claims that the worst feels like its past and that the rest is nothing summer sunshine and fresh air won't fix."

Tony notes that the words don't seem to leave Malcolm looking particularly convinced.

"How bad is it? Really?" he asks after a protracted minute.

"Right now? Not too bad actually. Yes, she still tires easily after too much strenuous physical exertion, but she's not nearly as shaky as she once was. She's eating again and can stay on her feet as long as she's not trying to compete in the Olympics."

Malcolm looks less than impressed. "Someone should have called me, Terry. I'm a medical doctor. Not to mention you've seen me use my secondary talent for healing in urgent situations."

"Keyword 'urgent,' Mal. This situation wasn't. Your secondary gift is more dangerous than your primary – it severely exhausts you every time you use it." Theresa pats his knee gently. "Mer had the right to make that call, Renny. She didn't want you draining yourself unnecessarily if you didn't have to."

"What Stubborn wants, Stubborn gets, is basically what you're saying." Malcolm rolls his eyes, snorting in exasperation, "Wimps. None of you could ever effectively stand up to her, could you?"

Thomas speaks up, finally, in his God-mother's defense. "Yeah well, the rest of us don't enjoy bashing our head against brick walls in the way that you do. Give Terry a break, Mal. We did the best that we could under the circumstances. You're the one who decided to wait so long to come home."

He pulls the truck over, hand gesturing to the fields on both right and left. "Peas and corn are planted in the fields to the east. Do you guys want to pick those this time, or are you gonna be joining me in digging up potatoes?"

"Tony and I will get the peas." Pepper is quick to voice her preference. Tugging at Tony's pants leg she takes a bucket in hand, and climbs down over the wheel well with some help from her lover's outstretched hand.

Malcolm climbs down himself, still a little piqued. "I'll grab corn and meet you all back at the house when I'm finished."

Tony gets the distinct impression he needs some time to himself.

"Grab a watermelon or two as well, Gin, if you find any that look ready…" Theresa calls out as they start walking toward a pumpkin patch and a large row of ripened tomatoes.

Pepper nods, diverting after a moment to the field on the left, with Tony in tow. He takes note of the slightly strained expression on her face, assuming it's from this less than cheery news about her friend and reaches up to scratch his nose. There's nothing he can really do for her at the moment except try to distract her. Seeing Merilee is probably going to be all that will help at this point, even if the other woman is recovering from illness. He can at least change the subject to something more positive for the moment though.

Intent on lightening the mood he gently nudges her with his elbow. "Com'on, Pep. You just missed a huge opening back there."

"An opening for what?" Pepper asks quietly. She cups one hand and rests it against her forehead to block out the sun as she studies the long string of blooming pea plants and their supportive wood fences.

"To comment on the appropriateness or lack thereof in my helping to judge the fitness of a 'melon.'" He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, hoping that she'll laugh like he intends her to.

She doesn't laugh outright, but the edges of her mouth curve upwards in amusement as she puts her hands on her hips. "You don't judge a 'melon' by sight, Stark, you judge it by the sounds that it makes when you thump it. Well that and by touch."

"And I have better than average practice at that as both," he finishes with a grin, sidling up closer. "Though, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure my technique is quite up to par...want to help me brush up?"

Pepper does laugh then, whacking him gently with the bucket. Then she stops halfway down one of the rows, setting down the bucket and reaching out to tear a light colored pea pod from the climbing vines and the wire. "This size is good." She holds it up in example. "Smaller needs more time and larger tends to be to fibrous unless you shell out the peas themselves."

He nods, deciding to let the double entendre die for now as he starts picking the vegetables. Instead he chooses a more casual subject. "I have to admit this place is far more...hilly...then I had expected. It's got a decent number of trees too."

Pepper shrugs. "We're down near one of the prairie lakes. More water can make quite a difference."

"It's still pretty rural though...I have a little trouble picturing you growing up here..."

"Why?" Pepper glances at him, snorting when he shrugs. "Fundamentally, I don't think there's too many differences between growing up in the country and growing up in the suburbs, Tony. Yes we definitely had more animals, and there was quite a bit of a bus ride to preschool, but home is home when you're that young. I mean, you run around inside like little hooligans until your parents get tired of it, at which point they toss you outside to run around in the yard instead."

Tony grins. "I know, I know…and it's probably silly. I guess I just can't imagine you ever being happy living this far from a decent office supply or shoe store."

Pepper laughs again in spite of herself. "For your information, Stark, until age 17 my favorite kind of footwear was sandals. Besides, it might have taken a little longer, but when I was a kid you could still get pretty much anything you needed out of a catalogue or from the department store in the nearest large town. It wasn't as fast, but we still had what we needed."

Tony gets a flash of that, the first flash he's gotten from her all day. "Birkies?" he asks a bit incredulously at the mental snapshot of her during her freshman year in college. "Seriously?"

She laughs again. "And long flowing skirts or t-shirts and jeans. Tony, you keep forgetting that both my parents were essentially hippies."

Ton snorts, shifting farther down the aisle. "You know, Pep, there's something very 'Green Acres' about you. I can't decide which I'm enjoying more, the thought of you in high heels or you in a peasant blouse at a public bra-burning."

Pepper snorts, "Mom was more the bra burner in our family - but then she was only a B cup. I on the other hand, like a little support, thank you very, very much…"

"A guy can dream," Tony informs her. Though, it might not be needed, since he's already dreaming...

The way Pepper rolls her eyes at him is good indication she knows it.

"No...just for the record," she says a little abruptly.

"No what?" he asks, as innocently as possible.

Pepper crosses her arms, "No I'm not having sex with you out in the woods, Stark. Or in the fields. That's a good way to get poison Ivy…"

"But…"

"I may be convinced - if you're good - to introduce you to the old hayloft in the south barn before we go home."

He turns to look at her, eyes wide for a moment before his eyelids lower and his gaze turns heated. "That's one metaphor that even I haven't had a chance to take literally."

"We'll need to bring a couple of blankets out there with us," she warns. "Getting poked in the ass by straw is not my idea of a good time..."

"I'll take your word for that, Ms. Potts." Their bucket is about half full. "How many more of these do you think we need to pick before we head back?"

Pepper shrugs. "Depends....with us, Dad and all the others at the house, there could be anywhere from 8-10 people at the table."

Tony blinks at that. "Really? That many?"

"Yeah. That many. Remember, we're on a former commune here, and even if we weren't, a place this big and with this many horses needs a fairly large set of people to keep it maintained."

"How big is the main house?" Tony asks after a moment, beginning to get a little concerned as to the glut or lack of privacy… "Tell me we're not going to end up in some kind of group dormitory."

"Hardly. There's plenty of smaller cabins around the main house that are equipped with private bedrooms and bathrooms. Though to warn you, all meals have always been communal around here."

Tony nods, "Well then pick until you think we should stop. On the way back to the house you can carry the buckets and I'll handle man-handling the watermelons."

"You would," Pepper shoot back, a little slyly.

00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo

"Hmph. So _you're_ the one that got her drawers in such a knot. Ginny, honey I thought you had more common sense than that. Though," Merilee looks up, scanning Tony from head to toe, "I suppose I can't fault you entirely – you look like you clean up pretty all right."

"Meri..." Malcolm's voice is a mixture of exasperation and amusement. "Anthony Stark, meet the 'always gracious' Merilee Anabeth Tate."

"A pleasure." The woman extends a hand for a handshake. "Welcome to Rohan."

"It's nice to meet you. Though for the record, please just call me Tony."

Pepper stops in front of the porch where Malcolm is sitting with Merilee. There's much that's new: the dramatic grey streak in her hair that runs along the right side of her face, crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, a frame that's thinner than Pepper's ever seen it. But there's so much that's the same; from the sparkling smile on her face to the gentle concern in her deep blue eyes. Hands that look as if they haven't lost any of their strength are shucking corn into the basin at her feet, with an ease that comes from long practice.

"Meri, you've been on this ranch for far too long if you can look at Tony and say he's anywhere near close to 'cleaned up.'" Pepper sets her bucket down and takes the few steps up to the porch.

Meri snorts, "He looks like a comfortable man should. I've never been much of a fan of those over-stuffed penguin suits."

Tony chuckles, setting down a watermelon on the porch railing in order to shake. "I can't say I think much of tuxedos myself. Unfortunately neither Pepper nor the Board are big fans of the idea of casual Monday through Friday."

Pepper snorts. "That's because his idea of 'causal' is jeans with holes in the knees and t-shirts stained with motor oil. Certainly not the kind of attire you'd allow at the dinner table, Meri." When Merilee stands for her hug, Pepper's a little surprised to find that she's taller than the other woman, even in her flats.

Meri smirks a little, "There's nothing wrong with a man wearing the mark of his trade. Hell, I suspect after all these years I smell more of horses than anything else."

Tony returns the firm grip, suddenly aware that despite the friendliness and the banter, that this woman would do her best to take him down if she felt he deserved it. Some of that understanding is in his voice when he says, "True, but I'm afraid that Pepper has never found the smell of scorched metal particularly appealing."

Merilee nods, wrinkling her nose in shared distaste. "Fair enough. Now come inside, you two and wash up. The Pot Roast should be nearly ready to be pulled from the oven."

"Where do you want these watermelons and the pea pods?" Pepper questions hefting the buckets.

"Watermelon can go on the counter. You and Tony can prep the peas over the sink and then throw them right in the water with the corn and bacon already in the blanching pot, please."

'The what?' Tony asks Pepper silently down their link. He can tell someone how to assemble an engine, from the first bolt to the last, but he has no idea whatsoever what a blanching pot is.

'Big metal stew pot - like they make soup in at restaurants. Don't worry it'll already be filled and on the stove. Probably with bacon on top.' Pepper pushes open the door to the house and then inhales appreciatively. "God, it's been way too long since I smelled that smell, Meri."

Tony just freezes in his tracks. He's been in a lot of four star restaurants, but he hasn't smelled anything this good since before his mother died. Maria Stark hadn't always had time to cook, but when she had, home-made bread had been one of her favorite things to make. And those times that he'd helped, she'd always set aside a little loaf to bake on its own, just for him.

"There's a mini loaf on the counter if you're hungry. Fresh apple butter as well." Merilee's voice comes floating in the screen door. "Though of course, this close to dinner I'll expect you two to share it."

Tony blinks for a moment, "How did she - ?"

"I knew you'd enjoy it, that's all." Merilee, Thomas, and Malcolm all enter, the men doing all of the carrying…

Thomas dumps a bowlful potatoes into the sink before he spots what Pepper and Tony are eating and pouts. "Hey what is this, Mom? No second mini-loaf for me?"

Merilee rolls her eyes. "You haven't asked me to make you one since you were a boy, Tom. And unlike Tony and Pepper, you get the privilege of eating homemade bread every week."

Pepper looks at Tony as he comes to stand beside her. He looks...surprised. And not exactly in a good way. "What's wrong?" she murmurs as she finishes spreading butter on one side of the roll and hands it to him, gently bumping against him with her hip.

"My mom used to always..." He shakes his head, "Bread with oatmeal and honey. Don't worry. It's not important. Never mind."

'Liar,' she tells him. 'You think I don't understand about mothers?' But she doesn't press him for details. Instead she takes a bite of her half of the bread and sighs with bone deep contentment as she starts to work on the vegetables.

Tony joins her, still introspective. After a few minutes of snapping, he gently pokes her with the tip of one finger. "You know, you could have told me it would be worth it to come here, just for the home cooking."

"I'd forgotten how good the food can be," she admits. "At least when it's Meri's turn at KP. Though, remember, Tony: commune. Everyone contributes something, even if cooking isn't their forte. Expect to get drafted into making at least one meal while we're here."

He nods, "If we can manage to find the right mozzarella and balsamic vinegar in town, I can probably manage a decent vegetable soup and bruschetta caprese."

Malcolm, chuckles a little fatalistically. "That actually sounds pretty good. Just make sure to make extra, since we'll probably need the leftovers when cooking falls to Tom or me."

"Hey!" Thomas protests, "I'll have you know while you were gone I discovered my calling in kitchen. All though it's technically out on the back porch and it's called Barbeque."

Meri snorts. "He makes a decent ginger pork spare rib. That much is true."

"And Dad, you make brownies that are pretty damn good," Pepper admits. "But meals as a whole could be pretty hit or miss back when I was a kid, unless Merilee was helping of course." Pepper glances over. "Though, I'm still trying to decide now if her 'sixth sense' was the reason she gave the others so much extra help, or if she just got tired of scrubbing out the blackened pans and dishes."

"A bit of both actually, though I did prevent a few imminent kitchen fires." Meri grins up at Malcolm. "Other times, though, I guess you could say that I knew the other residents well enough to save the tiger from itself." She looks to Pepper, "Ginny, we're nearly ready to eat. Can Tony here be trusted with the watermelon machete?"

Pepper sighs regarding the older woman with a longsuffering expression. "If I say yes, Meri, than you're going to give him a machete, and if I say no he's going to complain for the rest of the day that he didn't get to use the machete."

Merilee snorts, and looks at Tony. "It's hanging to the left of the black shelf in the pantry."

"Your faith in me is touching," Tony says a little dryly, locating the pantry without issue coming back into the kitchen, where he waggles his eyes at Pepper then the blade a little suggestively.

Pepper takes in his smirk and rolls her eyes. "You're very manly. Now go cut the damn thing already."

Tony nods, stepping in front of his first bright green victim, and hefting the blade experimentally. He pauses, "Uhm...cutting board? I don't want to scratch up your counters. And how do you want it cut, exactly?"

"Mal -" Pepper starts to say, but her father's already hoisting one of the melons and pointing to the other. "Let's take these outside to butcher. It'll be less of a mess."

Merilee holds the door as they exit. "Use the hose to clean the pavement after, please, if there's need."

"He can build bombs, but can't cut a watermelon in pieces without instruction? I don't know about this guy of yours, Ginny," Tom says after the moment from his place by the stove, though his tone is clearly teasing.

"He's certainly no worse than that girl in town you haven't brought home to meet me yet, Thomas," Merilee shoots back at her son, a little dryly.

Thomas' mouth falls open as he stares at his mother. He blinks. "Ella? How on earth do you…?"

His mother merely turns and looks at him, one eyebrow raised.

"Leave the potatoes in the sink, dear. Gin and I can handle them," she instructs the blushing man serenely.

Thomas, being smart and relatively attached to his greater well being, gets while the getting is good.

Merilee snorts as he departs, moving to the sink to start scrubbing the potatoes. "Honestly, that boy…like I didn't know about it a full week before he had his first kiss." She inspects one clean tuber before setting it in the sink.

Pepper smiles in spite of herself. "You know I always wondered about that...before Mal told me about your foresight, I mean. Back when we were kids poor Thomas in particular could never seem to get away with anything."

Merilee snorts again. "He got away with plenty, thank you very much. I only generally interfere where I see smoke, property damage or blood. People have to be allowed their mistakes or they won't ever learn anything."

Pepper resists the urge to stick her thumb in her mouth so she can bite her nail. It's a habit she's long grown out of, but there's something in Merilee's voice that's just so…instructional. Like a parent with a young child. The tone conjures up views of smoke, and blood, and property damage…most of which Pepper had done her best to ignore when they had intruded on her mind before their proper time.

Instead she focuses fiercely on the potato in front of her, brow furled as she deliberately starts cutting out bad spots. She hears Merilee sigh beside her, but doesn't look up. Understanding what Meri means makes this is suddenly very real to Pepper.

"Look, I know that Mal already chewed you out, Ginny." Meri sounds just as serene as always, encouraging Pepper to look up through her bangs. "He's your father, and that's his place. But despite the fact that he dragged you down here – for good reason, mind you. You still nearly scared him to death along with that boy of yours – you and I will talk in our own time."

"You're not mad at me then?" Pepper inquires a little meekly.

Merilee's glance is sly. "Honey, I didn't say that. But you're not looking much better than I am these days, and if I start in on you about that than I know that it's just a matter of time before you'll return the favor. Thanks but no thanks. Besides," Merilee's voice takes on a tone Pepper can't quite put her finger on. Something both pitiless and tender all at once. "You think I don't remember what it is like trying to deal with the sight when it first emerges? I still remember the fear and how it colored so much of those initial days."

Pepper nods, accepting that fact. Then she blows a puff of air upwards to get her bangs out of her face. "I can't remember the last time I heard anyone refer to Tony as a boy." It's a diversion, an out. But Merilee has more or less given her permission, and it's really not a topic to get into over dinner. Maybe tomorrow.

"Yeah well no offense, but in his case, the title still fits."

Pepper nods again, because there's an element of truth to that statement, still something Malcolm had told her earlier floats to the top of her memory. "Just be warned to be careful about voicing that kind of thing within his hearing. He pretty much slams up a wall permanently against what he perceives as true derision."

Meri raises her eyebrows. "Go figure. Mal always did have a spectacular lack of tact. Of course, he also had no warning. At least I knew to do some homework in advance."

"Homework?" Pepper grabs the peeled potatoes and starts cutting them into manageable chunks.

"Yes. The ranch has internet now. Email even. Your Mr. Stark is all over the news these days, so it took some hunting to find older articles. Ones without all the sensationalism."

Pepper sighs. "His relationship with the press does tend to be, at the very best, massively self defeating."

Meri nods, "You mean he's a chameleon. Tricky little buggers love to hide in plain sight."

"Mal says it's not Tony's fault," Pepper volunteers in Tony's defense. "Something about that being a gift of his. I've never heard of anything like it, though."

Meri looks at Pepper with something like shock before she starts laughing. And not just amused laughter, but deep, belly laughs that have her bracing herself against the counter to support her in her mirth.

Pepper sighs, lips quirking up just a little bit. "Do I even want to know why you're laughing at me?"

Meri shakes her head, still laughing, and only starts to get a grip when Tony and Mal come back into the kitchen with one very well cut watermelon and another that's...well, it's a good first attempt.

The men look as if they want to be let in on the joke, but Pepper just shrugs.

Moments later all their amusement turns to concern as Merilee stops laughing and instead starts to wheeze.

"Meri?" Malcolm's the first to catch the change in Meri's breathing pattern. He steps forward, pushing her onto a stool and then gently pushing her head toward the floor. "Slow deep breaths, Mer."

"I'mmmm...fine." She finally manages to stutter out. "My lungs just aren't used to drawing so deeply..." She has to swat at Mal's hands - somewhat awkwardly - before she can get him to let her sit up again. Her eyes are twinkling despite the somewhat ragged sound to her breathing. "Your daughter thinks you're making things up." She informs Pepper's father merrily.

"Huh?" Malcolm keeps one hand on Meri's shoulder, looking over at Pepper a little blankly.

"I just said I'd never heard of a...psychic chameleon, or whatever you want to call what you said Tony did." Both Tony and Mal look a little confused. "You said he mimics the emotions of the people around him," she says flatly.

"I what?" Tony's eyebrow raises nearly to the top of his hairline.

"That's not even what started me laughing." Merilee manages to continue. "It was just the irony of hearing Ginny say it."

Mal finally starts to look as if he gets it. "Ahh, yes. Because she has so much experience to base her opinions on."

Pepper's jaw just about drops, then she regains her composure, along with her posture. "The potatoes are ready to go in the pot," she says, back straight and shoulders square, even if there's nothing but affectionate exasperation in her tone. "Meri, why don't you tell us where Tony and I are staying so we can get washed up for dinner?"

Meri smiles, "I cleaned up the far cabin for you - nearest the yearling paddock. It's been renovated and has the most semblance of privacy."

"Thanks," Pepper says dryly, but there's real pleasure in her eyes. "Let's go get our stuff out of the truck," she tells Tony as she quickly rinses her hands.

Tony nods, a little bemused, but he follows her willingly. "Wow." It's the first and only thing he says once they're outside. He can tell Pepper's waiting for the rest, but he makes her ask for it.

Pepper looks at him as if she knows she's being baited - which she probably does. He's never been subtle about it. She manages to hold out until they reach the truck though before asking, "Wow, what?"

"Yeah. I've just never seen you cowed like that. Ever. I think it might be some kind of superpower."

Pepper snorts, "What can I say. It's Rohan, Stark. It's Merilee."

Tony chortles softly, "And you say that she was your mother's....cousin?"

Pepper nods. "Though they were brought up more like sisters."

"Which would explain why you two are so alike it's a little bit eerie?"

Pepper looks at him as if he's being weird. "We're not that much alike." Tony pauses, staring at her incredulously. "What?" Pepper asks a little self-consciously. "I mean, it'd be great if we were. Meri has this way of being completely calm in the face of chaos that's enviable...if you ask me."

Tony's grin is tender as he reaches up to squeeze her arm, "And do you honestly think that you're not the exact same way when we're in L.A. at the office or working at the mansion?" He shakes his head, "It the same 'aura of power' Potts, just in different territories."

She shakes her head. "Don't be silly. I get flustered way too easily. This way..." She gives him a mental tap as she heads towards their cabin.

"Maybe in you head, Pep. But I think you underestimate how well you keep it off of your face."

"Really?" She sounds surprised.

Tony just rolls his eyes. "Yes, really. To anyone who doesn't know you as well as I do, you're nothing less than a general on a battlefield."

"Huh..." He watches as she seems to think about this. "I always figured that any respect I garnered was a natural reaction on other people's parts, seeing as how the only other option is to deal with you directly instead of with me."

Tony's eyes narrow. "You're mocking me, aren't you?"

She snorts, "It's not my fault some consider that kind of encounter to be a fate worse than death…"

They finish the walk to the cabin in companionable silence, each with their own luggage. Tony looks forward to the walk back, when they won't have anything to carry, freeing him to hold her hand – he misses the easy opportunity to touch. When they reach the cabin, Tony falls back while Pepper mounts the steps to the porch.

"Huh." He murmurs as he looks it over slowly.

"Huh? What's brought about this unusual eloquence?" Pepper turns around to see him looking the cabin over. Then she rolls her eyes. "Yes, it's small. But it's clean and cozy, so stop complaining."

"I wasn't complaining." Tony defends himself as he catches up with her. "Pepper, this is a log cabin. Like, an honest to goodness log cabin."

Pepper shakes her head at the unmistakable enthusiasm in Tony's voice – sometimes he IS such a boy - then opens the door to reveal a modest interior. "Is this your way of admitting to some kind of weird 'Little House on the Prarie' boyhood kink?"

The downstairs is nearly one big room – small kitchenette, small breakfast nook. Most of the space is dominated by a sitting room, complete with a generous fireplace situated behind a handwoven ragrug pieced together in vibrant yellows, greens, and oranges and topped by a substantial mantle. The main room is partially overhung by a loft, accessed by a wide ladder rather than stairs. The foot of the bed is just barely visible from the door. One of the doors off the main room must lead to a bathroom. The windows are covered in some kind of gauzy material that lets the light in but blocks most of the view.

Tony's reaction to all of this of course it that he wants to take her to bed immediately.

"Dinner," she counters the rush of mental images almost apologetically. "With Meri cooking there won't be any leftovers if we're late, Tony."

"Fine, but I'm having dessert later in front of this fireplace," Tony whispers in her ear as he reaches for her things. He drops them by the sofa and wraps his arms around her, pulling her back against him tightly. "And yes, for the record, I used to think that girls who wore bonnets were hot."

She groans as her bottom pushes back against his growing erection. "Tending to the horses and other livestock usually falls in the hour right after the dishes are washed and put away. It may be awhile before we get back here."

He shrugs, extracting himself with a little moan of displeasure. "Well you did say earlier you hoped there'd be new foals to see while we were here."

"True. I may also try and borrow on of the stallions tomorrow. I haven't had the chance for a good, long ride in ages…"

Tony just looks at her, a little pained. "Potts, if you want me to behave, stop leaving me those kind of openings…."

"I enjoy making you suffer." She grins at him over her shoulder as she picks up her bags again and walks towards the ladder.

"Jeez...let them go back to their roots and they develop a vicious streak, I never saw this in Laura or Carrie."

Pepper just laughs at him as she climbs the ladder. "If we're going near the horses after dinner, you might want to change your shoes."

Tony raises an eyebrow. "To what exactly? These are the worst I own...the secondary set I keep for down in the shop." The loft reveals a wide, quilt topped metal frame bed. He points to another stack of blankets on a nearby chair and tilts his head in disbelief. "Pep, how cold exactly is it supposed to get at night out here?"

"This time of year?" Pepper glances at the blankets. "Not terribly. Mid-fifties?" She shrugs. "I'm sure Merilee just wanted to make sure we stayed comfortable. Or she knows something we don't."

"Great, now I'm going to be wondering if that's true constantly."

Pepper shrugs, as if she understands but doesn't see it as a big deal. "She likes to make sure people are comfortable. And I imagine that's twice as true for you. I mean, that was the thing with the bread earlier - she wants you to feel at home."

"I understand...but how in hell did she know my Mom's old favorite recipe?"

"That you're going to have to ask yourself. Though..." Pepper pauses as she toes off her shoes. "She did say she'd 'done her homework.' And that she'd had to dig to find anything that wasn't about Ironman." Pepper looks at Tony, her eyes wide. "Maybe she ran a background check on you."

Tony opens his mouth to defend himself, but pauses. Pepper's psychic...feel...is suspiciously bland. It's like the mental equivalent of a poker face.

"You're teasing me again."

"Yes. Tony, they probably just have the same cookbook." Pepper pulls a pair of ratty sneakers that Tony's never seen before out of her suitcase. "Just because almost everyone here has some kind of 'augmented' ability doesn't rule out coincidences." She winks, "Your insatiable libido is probably the world's only true mathematical probability."

Tony sweeps her with an evaluative look, starting at the crown of her head and stopping at her hips where they've sunk into the bed. "One more wisecrack out of you, Ms. Potts, and we're both going to bed without dinner."

She giggles, "Better get going then. I doubt either of us can spare the calories."

Tony climbs down the ladder first, catching Pepper by the waist before she can actually reach the floor. All her teasing does deserve some kind of payback, he rationalizes as he leans in for a slow kiss. Pepper meets it, still giggling softly. She feels...happy. Happier than he's seen her in a long time.

He finally pulls away from the kiss before temptation becomes too much. "I really like this place. Have I told you that yet?" He heads for the front door of the cabin, maintaining his grip on one of her hands.

"I'm glad." Pepper lets their hands swing easily between them. "God...I'd forgotten how NICE it is in the country. Not another neighbor for miles, no big towns for miles AND miles..." Pepper trails off as she realizes that she's on the verge of declaring that too many people in one place cause emotional pollution. That's not like her to say. And it's not something that should roll off her tongue. All it'd take is one statement like that in front of the Board and she'd be labeled "flighty" at best.

Tony shoots her a look, perhaps having caught the thought unintentionally. "It might also explain with her foresight, why Meri's so reluctant to leave the ranch. Especially if she has no one to buffer ever, like the two of us do."

Pepper shudders a little. "You know, it used to bug me that YOU were the only one I ever had dreams about. It seemed a little unfair that I didn't actually get any time off at all after you came back. But if I had to start seeing into other people's futures, I think I might lose it."

Tony looks thoughtful, like his mind is already jumping ahead. "Yeah. Pepper do you know if types of gifts always down through various generations in a family?"

"Types?" She glances at him, mind working as she tries to remember the awkward and abbreviated conversations she's had about this matter. "I'm not sure. The best that I can remember is that my mom was always saying that the women in our family have gifts. All of them. I was a fluke. Meri or Mal would be good people to ask though."

"It would just...well it would make sense to me if a empath produced another empath, and a seer a seer...it would basically be natures way of guaranteeing that each new gifted in each generation would have at minimum one mentor with similar gifts who's be there to help them adapt and cope properly."

"Well, if you really want to look at this from a biological standpoint, then I suppose you could say that my mom's gift was the equivalent of blond DNA. The genes that trigger it aren't the dominant ones. I guess Dad's must have been, and after that, whatever gift tends to run most commonly in my maternal side."

"But your mom WAS gifted...? Do you know how exactly?"

"Of cour-" Pepper stops mid-sentence. Of course? What does Pepper know? "She must have been. I don't think Mal would have bonded with her otherwise..." She chews her lip for a moment. "He told me his gifts never worked on her...and he assumed it was because of the link between them. But come to think of it, we're bonded as well. And that's never been an issue between you and me..."

Tony's eyes widen, a little, brain cataloguing new possibilities. "What if she was...well for lack of better explanation a white noise generator for gifts. Who either buffered gifts being directly used on her or kept others from accessing their talents fully?" he murmurs, not even at her exactly.

Pepper's saved from needing to reply - or comment - by Tom. "Mom made us hold dinner on you... Hey, what's got you looking so serious?"

Pepper squeezes Tony's hand as they mount the stairs. "Tony's disturbed by his newly discovered 'Little House on the Prairie' fetish."

Tony gives a surge of what she's come to recognize as mental affirmation. "Yup. I'm sure it'll get better after we have something to eat."

Tom just looks from one face to another before he shakes his head. "TMI, you guys. Even if you are kidding. Which I hope to god you are."

Pepper makes a face, before picking a comment she knows will permanently divert the topic. "Would this be a good time to ask you all about Ella, Tommy?"

Tom winces. "God, and I thought you asked annoying questions when you were THREE."


	12. Chapter 13

Dinner, as it turns out, is one part circus, and one part free for all. Tony, for all his prior experience, has never seen anything quite like it before. The old wooden table in the dining room is nearly twelve feet long and filled to the brim with every serving dish imaginable - or at least that's how it seems.

That doesn't stop the thing from being cleared at a rate that should have be impossible by any law of reasonable physics. He does his best to keep up - spooning out various selections of good smelling food as the chattering residents around him filled their plates in an almost ballet like dance of swapping bowls and serving platters.

"Potatoes smell heavenly, Mer...hey where's the brown butter...?"

"Eli, don't bother - I already salted that corn..."

"The honey's got fabulous color, Theresa - it looks like the bees are really liking the raspberry bushes you planted this spring…"

"Here," Pepper murmurs to him softly, dumping a generous serving of pot roast on his plate as well as onto her own. "You better stake your claim on the protein before this gets to Dad or Tommy. It'll be gone once they're through…" She pauses, looks at the serving of meat she'd just given Tony, then quickly adds another, smaller piece to both their plates. From the way he'd been looking at her earlier, he was probably going to need the extra protein before the night was over.

For that matter, she admitted, lips quirked, she would likely need it too.

"Hey..." Tommy's whine interrupts the warm thought seconds later, "What the hell happened to all the pot-roast!? Wasn't this like twice this size two minutes ago?" He stares down at Tony and Pepper's end of the table a little accusingly, sizing up the contents of their plates.

Merilee snorts, adding a small pile of pea pods to the spoonful of potatoes and the half slice of buttered bread on her plate, before pouring gravy over her spuds. "You can have my share of the meat if you really think that you're all that near to starvation, Thomas..."

Theresa and Eli's simultaneous raspberries made it very clear what they think of that possibility.

Mal just lifts an eyebrow as he dumps an ear of corn and another full slice of bread in front of Meri without further comment. The look he gives Tommy indicates certain consequences if the young man's mother doesn't eat her apportioned meal by herself.

Pepper hides a smile as she looks down at her plate. 'At least with Meri recovering, Mal's got someone else to fuss over for the time being.'

Besides, there's more than enough food to go around, and probably even enough for anyone to get seconds if they're really that hungry.

'Though Tony, if he gets distracted enough by the conversation, will forget he's actually hungry.'

So she elbows him. "Eat," she instructs, before picking up her own fork. "Around here those who insult the cook by letting their meal get cold while daydreaming are forced to do the dishes, usually."

"That's not much of a threat these days, unfortunately," Eli informs them with a smug smile.

"Yeah," Theresa chimes in, looking equally self-satisfied. "Especially since the rest of us rebelled against 'she who shall not be named' and installed a double loaded dishwasher in the kitchen last summer when she wasn't looking."

"Traitors, all of them," Meri speaks blandly, taking a deep drink of milk as, "…afraid of a little elbow grease…"

"Don't look to Tony for sympathy on the subject," Pepper says just as dryly. "He's still trying to figure out how to have both a normal looking kitchen AND a fully automated dishwasher. Thankfully, the plan that involved an army of highly trained robots didn't work out the way he intended."

"That's what I get for using the same base program as Butterfingers," Tony acknowledges a little bit wryly.

"There's nothing wrong with working up a little sweat occasionally," Merilee says with an almost regal level of dignity. "Working with ones's hands is good for the soul. In my experience there's a fine line between mechanical assistance and technological over-dependency. For instance," she smirks in Tony's general direction, "My mustangs may be a little slower to accelerate than yours, but they also don't pollute as much or need regular oil changes."

There's no actual condemnation of his love of cars in her voice, just good-natured teasing, so Tony laughs in reply, before shrugging. "My mother felt much the same actually. She kept horses all through my childhood, though I never really warmed to the hobby as much as she hoped that I would. Dad and her liked to ride some weekends but I really preferred to stick to the motorcycles in the shop..."

"Real horses too dull for your tastes, then?" Thomas raises an eyebrow.

"No, too smelly and too big - at least at our first introduction. I was probably four the first time that my mom coaxed me up onto Palmo's back, and even though she was right behind me for the whole ride, I still supposedly bawled like a spineless weenie about how high up we were. And after when I tried to feed him half an apple he responded by head butting me nearly off my feet..."

Laughter shook the occupants of the table. "And your mother let it go at that?" Malcolm finally asked. "Didn't encourage you to get back in the saddle?"

"Oh no. She gave me the typical line about falling off the horse and climbing right back on." His smile turns a little nostalgic, "Thanks to her, I did eventually learn the basics of horsemanship... how to groom, put on tack and not fall off during normal riding. Before my parents' accident, Mom and I used to try and go riding at least one weekend morning every month...I even owned a stallion that was boarded at their stables…"

Pepper blinks at this, "I don't think you've ever mentioned that before…what happened to him?"

Tony shrugs, "I donated him with the others in my parents collection to a riding program for at risk kids…I didn't have the time to keep him properly exercised so there was no point to keep him. As for not knowing I rode –" he shrugs. "The media has always emphasized the things I that had in common with my father more so than with my mom - which is natural, since we had such similar talents. My love of music and art though...that was largely Mom's doing. Not to mention more than one person has told me that I inherited her rather twisted senses of humor..."

Merilee snorts in response. "Probably. Most mothers are required to develop one of those if they want to survive parenthood. Still, I'm glad to know you're somewhat familiar with horsemanship, since it means that after dinner you and Sprite can see to feeding and watering the colts for me while I handle currying the two year olds and check in on the mare who's going to foal within the next week or so."

"Wait a minute...'Sprite?'" Tony looks at Pepper and raises an eyebrow. "Is this like an actual, documentable childhood nickname that I can blackmail her with now?"

Pepper groans, "Oh thank you SO much for revealing that bit of information, Merilee..."

Malcolm grins as he sips his milk, "Be glad we didn't name you 'Tink,' Virginia. Or worse yet 'Moonbeam' - Sunny actually considered that in the months she was carrying you...though in the end I believe you were named for your maternal great-grandmother."

"Moonbeam!" Tony and Pepper both raised their eyebrows simultaneously. Pepper can hear Tony's silent laughter in her head, and pokes him with one finger.

"Hey - we were all a bunch of long-haired hippies back then remember? Even if Mal's really the only one who's kept the hairstyle since then..." Eli informs them with a snicker. "Though for the record your mother embraced the eccentricities of the peculiar lifestyle even more so than most of us. Moonbeam was the best of the names on the list to be frank."

"You said her name was Sunny?" Tony asks the question curiously…

"Amelia actually," Malcolm informs him, "Sunny was a nickname she got as a girl that stuck, though…it fit her personality."

Theresa laughed. "She was a TERRIBLE prankster. I still remember when you first came to Rohan for a visit, Renny, and she convinced you and Meri that that poor goat had fallen into the old well…"

Eli looks to Pepper with a soft smile. "She was a bright soul…and one that is missed. Though speaking of the past, Gin, we cleaned out one of the older cabins a few months ago before we tore it down, and found some boxes we'd forgotten about up in the attic of stuff from the old days. We have some things of your mother's - clothing, pictures and the like - I also think there's a few notebooks and a canvas or two if either you or Malcolm want to claim them..."

"I..." Pepper doesn't say anything to the offer. Doesn't know what to say to it honestly.

Tony's hand settles warmly against the nape of her neck. "I think you can count us out for tonight; Pepper and I were planning to hit the hay early. We're both just a bit worn out yet from a few days ago." His tone is light, just a little deprecating. There's certainly no concern in it, but that along with a good dose of understanding is being communicated privately to Pepper through the gentle massage of his fingertips and connection of their bond.

Pepper allows herself to nod. "Yeah...though thank you for offering. I'll get to it tomorrow or the next day maybe."

Eli nods, and goes back to shoveling food into his mouth. Pepper clears most of her plate, as do both Tony and Malcolm. Merilee manages about two thirds of her own dinner before she sets her fork down - earning a stern look from Malcolm.

She waves him off with a wry twist up of her lips. "No point trying to take in so much that it will all come back up, Ren. I'll eat again before bed. There's pie waiting to go into the oven after dishes are done." Merilee stands and begins collecting the dirty dishes. "As for the rest of the evening - after chores are done might I suggest we all start thinking about retiring…? Tomorrow's likely to be full and start early."

Theresa raises an eyebrow. "Is that just a prediction or a warning to be on guard for something in particular Meri?"

Merilee shrugs, "Nothing specific I can lay my finger on yet. Though we're probably wise to prep for the possibility of big storms tonight. I can already feel the barometer dropping, and that tends to bring on foaling, that's all. I'll probably crash on the cot in the barn tonight...just in case Calleigh and her little one have need for me."

Tom nods at that, before rising to help his mother with the cleanup. "In that case, Mom, let me at least fill the generator so you can turn on the heater out there. It's been unseasonably cold at night lately. The last thing you need to do is catch another cold."

Malcolm shakes his head. "I'll take care of it when I check the other stock, Tom. Unless the procedure's changed to fuel and start up I mean?"

Meri shakes her head. "It's the same as always, Renny. We did get a new generator finally, but it broke week before last, and the repair man in town hasn't been able to make it out to do repairs, so the old one got pulled out of storage." She looks to Pepper. "We'll finish clean up in here, Virginia, if you two want to get a start on the stock feeding. Apples and carrots are in the back storage pantry and grain's in the bins the same as always. The hose to fill the water trough is already in the field."

Pepper nods, folding a last piece of pot roast between a slice of bread for Tony before making a similar sandwich for herself. There's no need to motion for him to follow; she gets up from her seat and just knows that he'll be a step behind her. Intent on her task, she doesn't pause when they step out onto the wraparound porch, but Tony grabs her elbow and murmurs, "Wait up a sec."

She turns inquisitively, only to see the sight that's captivated him. The sun is going down, turning the thin bank of clouds to the west nearly black, but edged in brilliant gold and pink. It's a beautiful sunset, even without the Pacific ocean spread out below it.

They linger for a few seconds, finishing their meal, then Pepper does tug on his hand. "Com'on. I want to get the stock fed before it's totally dark."

00oo00oo00oo00oo

"So..." Tony asks, following Pepper toward the barn with another glance over his shoulder, "I'm confused. Did we just get warned that it might rain, or that it WILL rain tonight?" Those clouds look like they're far away, but it's hard to tell out here. There's nothing to judge their size against other than the setting sun. The horizon is nearly a flat line. Back home there were the Santa Monica mountains to use as a judge for distance.

Pepper glances back at him as they enter the barn. The smile on her face is somewhat impish. "It could go either way. Meri's not a machine, Stark. Although, even forecasting equipment has its difficulties correctly predicting the weather."

Tony nods, "Just asking...so what happens if it does storm?"

"If we've properly prepped the ranch and tied down all possible flying objects...nothing too serious. We stay inside and hope there are no lightening strikes to any of the outbuildings. Don't worry - I don't think we've seen any flying monkeys for years..."

"Do I need to be reminding myself that there's no place like home?" Tony asks dryly. Despite her silence earlier in the day, he can feel Pepper's sense of amusement growing by leaps and bounds – to a near giddy relief. It's almost enough to make him wonder if psychics ever experienced some sort of emotional overcompensation. If her moods would be at extreme ends of the emotional spectrum for a few days or weeks still since her mind wasn't quite healed up all the way yet.

"Only if you don't own a pair of ruby slippers..." she says with a snort. The feed bin is waiting in the first stall on the right; Pepper heads there, taking two buckets from a low shelf and scooping grain into them efficiently.

"Not really my style," he replies dryly. "Need any help carrying that?"

"Well, one of these is for you." Pepper puts several additional scoops into one of the buckets. "There, you can put all those pretty muscles of yours to work."

"My muscles are 'pretty?'" Tony asks wryly. His theory about emotional overcompensation is looking more and more likely. Though, considering all the forms it could take, playful and silly are nothing less than a godsend. "Out of all the descriptors you could have picked, Potts - manly, impressive, sexy, hunky - you had to choose 'pretty'?"

She smiles, "Well given our currently location, I suppose I could be convinced to call you 'studly' instead."

Tony steps forward, bypasses the buckets entirely, and gently traps Pepper up against the feed bin. His sets his hands to either side of her hips, and faux-glowers down at her. She, knowing exactly what he really feels, just grins up at him.

"You," he informs her, bending down to kiss her softly, "are just asking for it, Ms. Potts."

She rises up on her tiptoes, deepening the contact before pulling back. "Maybe."

"Seems if I really wanted to punish you, I'd send you up to bed without 'dessert' tonight."

Pepper snorts. "Yeah good luck with that. I didn't pack any pajamas and there's only one bed."

"There is a fireplace, Potts - and that rug looked awfully comfortable." Tony steps away and grabs a bucket. "And I hear exercise warms the body." If she wants to tease, he'll tease back. He has a little bit more self-restraint than she probably thinks.

Besides, playing hard to get and making the proper Ms. Pepper Potts work to seduce him could be fun.

Pepper just smirks, closes the feedbin and lifts her own bucket. "Come on then Mr. Self-Control. It's late and the horses are waiting."

She leads him out a side door and around the building to a large, well kept horse paddock. Inside half a dozen animals of different coloring are idling together near the far fence. A sharp whistle from Pepper is enough to make them lift their heads and look in their direction curiously.

"Are they going to come over?" Tony murmurs. "They don't know us after all..."

"Actually the roan mare over there does know me..." Sure enough one of the horses - a compact filly with dark forelocks and tail turns to trot toward the fence. Pepper grins at the sight and eases over the wood slatting, setting down the buckets on the other side and waiting for the animal to approach.

"Hey Beautiful." She looks over her shoulder at Tony as the horse snuffs her shoulder. "This is Tia. This old girl is what passes for the colt nanny."

Tony mimics Pepper, moving slowly over the fence. He pulls some sugar cubes out of his pocket, correctly interpreting Pepper's surprised look. "I stole a few from the kitchen counter on the way out. I'm not above bribing strange animals. Especially when they can trample me without breaking a sweat."

Pepper chuckles softly. "I wouldn't worry too much about any of them being bullies. Merilee expects more from them manner wise than she does from this places HUMAN residents. And we have a saying around here..."

"What Stubborn wants, Stubborn gets?"

Pepper snorts. "Mostly. Though you'll notice Mal is not suicidal enough to say that to her FACE..."

Still, Tony offers the sugar cubes, if for no other reason than he can tell that Pepper loves the horse. He pats the roan's neck carefully, then jerks his head towards the rest of the herd. "What about them?"

Pepper whistles again. "Get out the carrots and apples...their stomachs should over-rule their fear soon enough."

Sure enough with the Roan already present, the younger horses start to approach as well, their gait increasing to an eager trot as Pepper starts slicing chunks of apple and offering them in the palm of her hand. "I've got this. Grain goes in the feeding receptacle next to the watering bin..."

Tony nods and dumps the buckets in, watching the horses finish their treat from Pepper before jockeying for position by the trough. One of the larger takes a nip at a smaller and Pepper steps in to take it's halter and look at it reprovingly, "Now you behave..." The tone's so like the one she's used on him in the past Tony can't repress a grin.

"You lot done yet?" The call come from the house. It sounds like Mal. "We're cutting into the pie in just another minute…."

Tony looks at Pepper, eyebrows raised. "Dessert, Pepper?"

"You or Meri's peach pie..." She pauses a moment, lips just the tiniest bit quirked. "That's a hard decision actually..." She smirks. "I think I'll take my chances back at our cabin...unless your sweet tooth is calling?"

"I've always preferred tarts to pies, myself."

She groans, gathering up the buckets "That was a TERRIBLE pun..." Her voice rises enough to carry to the house. "Tony and I will pass on pie tonight, Malcolm!"

"You sure, Ginny? Meri says you're too skinny."

"I'm sure," Pepper calls back, rolling her eyes. "I'll catch up at breakfast." The last is for Tony only.

Tony frowns a little, probably because he happens to agree with Malcolm's assessment, so Pepper reaches out to squeeze his arm reassuringly. "Knowing Meri there are also an assortment of various munchables back in one of the cupboards at the cabin. We'll tackle one hunger after we handle another..."

"You didn't get enough to eat at dinner?" Tony asks innocently. He can't help the way that he reaches for her hand again. Touching her is too incredible a privilege to take for granted.

"Depends I guess on how we plan to burn the calories." Her expression was a little too innocent, "I was thinking that if you're really not up for round two then maybe before bed I'd take a nice long, soapy shower..."

Tony can't hide the way his hand spasms around hers, but he does reply, "I thought I'd get a fire started. I mean, the fireplace I have at the house is nice, but hardly the same thing." His voice grows a little more intense. "The red's not the same...the sounds aren't the same..." Pepper's definitely not the same as anyone else. This is the real thing.

Her answering smile is...something..."Sounds good...so you gonna set that up while I bathe, or do you want me to wait so you can join me?" She leans forward to murmur in his ear, "I'd appreciate the assistance. It's hard for a girl to scrub her own back, you know..."

Tony looks at her, eyes narrowed, as he places a hand on the small of her back as she climbs the steps to the cabin. "You might be able to convince me to give you a hand. If you're good I might even dry you off in front of the fire."

"Good." The tiniest bit of a smile quirks up her mouth, "Oh don't worry, I'm sure I can manage to be that. For a little while at least."

After that, she fully intended to be BAD.

00oo00oo00oo00

An hour and a half later they lay side by side in bed, both free from the smell of horses, if not from the smell of human sweat... Tony sighs in contentment, burying his nose in the curve of her neck. "Yeah…tarts over pies definitely…"

Pepper giggles at the comment, "I'll take that as a compliment. Though we need to get up Tony. I'm HUNGRY..."

"Again?" He doesn't really need to ask - both the bond and her growling stomach provide more than ample confirmation.

Pepper only shrugs, throwing aside her half of the blankets to sit on the edge of the bed. "It's something about the air out here I think…I always eat way more than normal. Well more than I do in L.A, anyway Though to be fair…" She stands and lifts an afghan from the chair beside the window, shaking it open and wrapping it around her middle like a sarong, "I also tend to earn it. Life on a ranch can be pretty busy."

"I noticed," he replies dryly. Suddenly the schedule she's never complained about keeping back in L.A. doesn't seem so overwelming. Yes Pepper's days tend to start early and end late…but she genuinely had no objection to work for its own pleasure apparently. Granted he still planned, in the days to come, to give her regular incentive to linger a little longer in bed.

"So…you need food," he continues, picking the threads of the conversation back up. "Does this require we get dressed to go back up to the main house?" he asks a little mournfully, eyes taking in the smooth lines of her legs beneath the hem of her makeshift wrap.

Pepper snorts, clearly aware of his general direction of thought. "No…but it's cold enough even with the fire that I suggest you protect your bits by at least putting some boxers and a pair of socks on."

Tony nods, flipping his own side of the blankets aside and then scrambling for his bag in the corner… "Jeez! I thought you said it only gets into the fifties here this time of year…!"

"Fifty is COLD, Tony. Especially with a storm blowing in."

Pepper points to the window and Tony's eyes widen as he registers the flashes of lightening that illuminate even through the gauzy covering on the window. He pushes it back and whistles. "Wow…are you sure about the whole lack of flying monkeys thing, Pep…cause it looks like the Wicked Witch out there is about to get nasty…"

Pepper snorts, than comes to stand beside him at the window, leaning back against his chest before turning wistful eyes toward the horizon. "You know that's what I think I used to miss the most about this place…"

"The storms?"

Pepper nods then shrugs, "It's weird I know. I just…they're BEAUTIFUL you know? Every bit as much as they're dangerous. Maybe BECAUSE they're dangerous. It's a little hard to explain…"

"Like the ocean maybe? You can love it yes, but you better also respect it or that love could end up getting you drowned?"

Pepper chews her lip than nods. "Yeah…yeah that's the best explanation I've heard for it. Storms and horses and the ocean…all gorgeous but also completely capable of killing you if you take them for granted…"

Come to think of it she supposes the same thing could be said for her and Tony's new bond.

Tony's arms tighten around her. Maybe he caught the thought and maybe he didn't. "Come on," he murmurs. "Let's see what Meri stashed in the pantry…"

She nods, allows herself to be led over to the ladder and then down to the fireplace…

"Okay…Jiffy Pop Popcorn. Peanut butter and crackers. What looks like home-made granola bars…instant cocoa and coffee pouches…"

Pepper nods, opening a small refrigerator Tony hadn't noticed sitting against the far end of the hearth.

"Popcorn works for me - we've already got the fire warm enough to cook it. There's also apples, cubes of cheese and a six pack of eggs and milk in here if you want to fry that up. There's a cast iron skillet and a tea kettle both that can go directly over the fire…"

"Popcorn's fine." Tony tilts his head as she digs through the fridge. "So when you were still a kid did your mom ever let you cook over one of these during a storm? Cause I never got to do that sort of thing except the one time my Dad and I went out camping…and I would have thought it was so cool…"

Pepper chuckles a little. "I never stayed in the outcabins when I was a kid Tony. My Mom and Merilee co-owned the Ranch. That meant we both had rooms up at the Ranch house…I had Mom's old one next to Tommy and Merilee, and she had both her bedroom and studio up in the attic…"

Tony nods, glad to hear her talk about the past without pain despite the mention of her mother. Moments later he grasps exactly why as she continues to verbalize memory. "Good lord when I was still seven or so I must have driven Meri and Theresa both CRAZY…"

His lips quirk, "You? Were something other than a perfect angel…?"

She laughs again. "Hardly. I was a chatterbox and a precocious reader, Tony. And according to Mal I used to follow them both around asking them to sound out words I didn't know for me…Lord knows Meri had plenty to do other than play dictionary but…"

Meri had always made time for all the children on the commune. Pepper had missed her…missed her almost unbearably the first few weeks after her and her mother had finally left.

Hell she'd missed everything about this place. Had mourned it, frankly, even more than she'd mourned her mother after her death/suicide half a decade later.

The thought seems unfaithful somehow, so she slams the door shut on it roughly.

"Pep?" Tony's soft voice yanks her out of the tumult building in her own head.

She looks up at him through suddenly blurry eyes, to find him smiling apologetically.

"Not that I mean to pry," he murmurs, settling his hands on her hips and brushing kisses over her face. "But if you need a moment, I'll get all this ready. Why don't you go add a couple more logs to the fire?"

"All this?" she asks softly, accepting the comfort offered.

"Yeah. There's some nice looking cheddar in there. That along with a couple of apples and the popcorn sounds like a good before bed snack. And while the watermelons might have given me pause, I think I can cut up a couple of apples without supervision."

Pepper exhales on a laugh. "Call me if you need a hand."

"I would definitely call your name while you're giving me a hand."

"Not what I meant, Stark."

"Hey, a guy can dream." He presses one more kiss to her neck. "Go on, I'll be right out and I expect you to provide me with warmth after this effort I'm going through to do the hunting and gathering."

She snorts, but moves into the other room, her thoughts deliberately focused on the task he'd given her despite the teasing. Coming back to the ranch is clearly going to make her face up to a lot more than just her burgeoning abilities; and she's not the only one who's going to get stirred up. Tony was too. Seeing as that was the case, she'd like to try – and she'd have to remember to ask Mal tomorrow if it were really possible – to keep the cabin a "brooding free" zone. She wanted this place to feel happy, and intimate, and safe. There were plenty of other places on the ranch where she could work through the untended mess of emotions left inside of her still. Here was her and Tony's space. Their safe place.

Surely she could put this off for one more day. Not even one more day. Just a few more hours. She could put this off for a few more hours until she could talk to someone who could actually understand instead of simply feel it all with her. Sympathy over empathy.

Mind over matter.

Surely waiting a few more hours to confront this wouldn't hurt.


	13. Chapter 14

"So - can I ask you a question?"

"You can ask. I won't guarantee an answer." Malcolm's voice is content as he walks through the brush ahead of Tony, a dark blue hiking backpack thrown over his shoulder. Tony, who's been lent a bag of the same kind in brown, follows behind him, regarding the surrounding forest curiously.

'Though forest isn't really the right word.' There aren't enough actual trees for it to be that. There are just a few half grown trees spread yards apart, intermingled with tall scrub brush and the occasional flowering plant. He notes more than one hedge of raspberry bushes as they walks and makes a mental note of their location. Pepper *loves* raspberries.

"You told me on the day that we met that your name was Malcolm Keith-Behyr, and yet everyone here calls you 'Renny?'"

Malcolm laughs aloud. "Not everyone. While not at first at least. Sunny absolutely hated the nickname while she was alive, so I asked that it not be used in her presence. Now that she's gone fifteen plus years though…I guess you could say the contagion's spread."

He shrugs. "In truth, Meri's the one who uses it most often...I guess you could say that it's her way of making sure I don't get too big for my britches." When Tony raises an eyebrow at that explanation the older man shrugs, than colors a bit. "My full name is Malcolm Edmund Renfield Keith-Behyr the third. Unfortunately."

"Malcolm Edmund Renfield... the THIRD..." The slow smirk that spreads across Tony's face earns him a good natured smack to the back of his head.

"You forgot Keith-Behyr, smartass. And yes, though I remind you none of the above was exactly what I'd call voluntary."

Tony nods, mentally recalculating his internal picture of Pepper's father. Until now he'd assumed that Malcolm had been born in the upper middle class - though he was clearly well educated, his speech patterns and clothing didn't exactly advertise him as someone who'd come from a world that was particularly 'old money.'

A name that long though...that spoke of dynastic lines.

"Keith-Behyr, huh...from what city? And which coast?" The name Renfield is also tweaking something in his memory. He's heard it before, he's just not sure where.

"New York, on my dad's side. Though the company also has offices in Washington state, near the Boeing plant in Seattle's Eastside."

Comprehension dawns; he stops where he is. "Wait a minute. Weren't the Renfield's the ones who made out like bandits in the mid-fifties and sixties with all those advances in aircraft design?"

"Yeah - that would have included my maternal grandfather John and my uncles Henry and Daniel. My mom Jaime as well…though she pretty much retired from the business once my siblings and I were born. Now my cousins head the tech department, pretty damn successfully, I'll admit." Malcolm shrugs. "Though unlike Stark Industries, Renfield Aeronautics mainly manufactures products for use in civilian emergency services. SWAT teams, life-flight vehicles...that sort of thing."

Tony just stares at him a minute. "You know, I think I had a couple of classes with one of your nephews back when I was at MIT..."

Malcolm winces. "Thomas or Gregory?"

"Don't know. He went by 'Buddy.'"

Malcolm shakes his head, apparently truly regretful. "That would have been Greg. And for the record, I'm sorry."

"He was..." Tony tries to find a way to state his opinion of the man he remembers politely.

Malcolm snorts. "Let me guess, an unscrupulous, arrogant ASSHOLE? As previously stated, I'm sorry."

Tony observes the man standing in front of him. "I'm sensing that there might have been a fallout of some kind…"

"Let's just say that aside from my mother, I don't tend to speak to much of my extended family. She at least is proud to have a son who completed medical school and dedicated his life to 'doing good works'...everyone else, just basically thinks I'm 'flaky.'"

"Do they not..." Tony motions between them somewhat weakly, as if he's uncertain of what the proper motion to describe a psychic talent is.

"Have gifts, themselves? A few do, yes. Not that they'd EVER admit it. And not just out of fear of public perception either. Those that have a touch of the paranormal don't want to lose whatever small business advantages it gives them."

'Ah.' "I assume you're probably a good deal more...talented...than they're used to dealing with, and therefore a bit of an anomaly?"

"Black sheep who refused to get my wool bleached. When I was twenty they called it a phase. Now that I'm in my fifties they call it eccentricity." Mal's lips twitch in amusement. "They're all a bunch of elitist snobs for the most part. One thing I don't regret is keeping Virginia away from that part of my life."

"Speaking of family - I had a few questions about that actually; Pepper and I were discussing this last night. 'This' being the genetic rules of being gifted… Do you know if certain types of gifts run in families like other genetic characteristics, or do they just show up randomly?"

"Some gifts pop out of a previously unknown lines, yes." Malcolm shrugs, "But from what I've seen in my travels and studies on the subject specific abilities or types of abilities do have the tendency to manifest in family lines."

"So then my …talents were likely shared by either my mom or my dad..."

"I honestly don't know. I never met either of them. It wouldn't surprise me though, given what I know of your background. Your dad was nearly as good at math as you are, right?"

"Better in some ways," Tony admits. Then he chews his lip and sighs. "Though at a definite price. He was always a little dense in social situations. He used to call Mom his 'ace in the hole' when it came to dealing with the 'messiness of people.' Neither of them ever mentioned gifts to me though. Maybe they just never got the chance."

Malcolm's eyes are sympathetic. "It's also possible they just didn't know. A fairly large percentage of people with our talents simply never realize they're more than just usually bright or lucky."

Tony perks up at that; Malcolm having data means that he can find some of the answers he's looking for without dragging Pepper down into his workshop like she'd feared. He'd LOVE to run Mal's data through Jarvis and see what the latter has to say about the psychically gifted part of the population. "So then either of my parents could have had the 'weird' genes is what you are saying...and just not have realized it."

Mal snorts at his words. "Yes, though I admit that my interpretations of the data I've collected could be challenged. And 'weird' might not be the best choice of terminology..."

"My..." Tony stumbles over what kind of 'terminology' to apply to Pepper. Girlfriend doesn't go nearly far enough. They were closer to life partners - though she hadn't seemed all that enthused about the thought of getting married. For reasons that don't need much explanation considering what he now knows of her background.

"Pepper sees the future. I think that qualifies as weird, if the definition we're using is something out of the ordinary instead of bizarre or freakish."

Malcolm nods. "Foresight is rare – I'll give you that much. Hard to control and in some ways, far too costly for those who chance to inherit it. If I'd had any say in the matter I'd have preferred Ginny and Meri not have it at all."

Tony feels as if a cloud has passed over the sun, even though the sky is clear. The chill is purely empathic, and emanating from Mal.

He wets his lips; "Costly as in foresight takes a lot out of the user mentally, or as in there's something more about of this that I need to know and you haven't told me yet?" He wouldn't rule out that Malcolm had hiked him out far enough out to make sure his chances of upsetting Pepper with his reaction are slimmer.

"The former most certainly. A little bit of the later."

"Damn." Tony stops and sets his bag down, doing his best to brace himself internally for whatever was coming. "Then I'd prefer you tell me now rather than jerking me around for another half mile."

Since there doesn't seem to be an easy way to tell what he has to say, Mal just shrugs his shoulders saying quietly, "No one in Pepper's line with the gift of foresight has ever lived past the age of sixty."

Tony takes a slow, deep breath, though not easily as his chest has gone into total lockdown it seems. The thought of losing Pepper to circumstances so far outside their own control is…terrifying in a purely physical, gut reaction, fight or flight sort of way.

"Since I never heard this from her as yet another reason while completing the bond was mistake, I assume she doesn't know…" he murmurs quietly.

"No. Sunny didn't have the gift herself… and she kept Ginny largely away from the rest of her family. She claimed she was doing it for Virginia's sake - that she didn't want Pepper to end up feeling neglected if Tommy's gifts started manifesting and he 'sucked up' all of the adults' time and attention. Not that Meri would have tolerated ANY kind of favoritism of one child over another."

Malcolm shrugs. "As a result Pepper was taught very little about her gifts and family history as a child. Once she did come of age…well we couldn't exactly force her back here if she didn't want to come."

"So you just gave up when she turned down the initial invitation?"

"No. We gave her some space - just enough to let her believe she was unwanted or forgotten. We wrote her letters, and called regularly. Sent invitations to come and visit every Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. She consistently turned them down. I'll admit to a fair amount of despair over the whole situation but as Meri once said: 'some wounds heal slow. Trees bear fruit in their own time.'"

Tony nods in acknowledgement, than returns to the numbers, predictably. "Time in this case being a maximum of sixty years or is that the best it gets? Do they literally drop dead the day before they turn 61 or something?"

"No… it's more insidious than that. The gift and the stress it causes just wears them out in both mind and body." Malcolm sighs deeply, "My suspicion is that the weight of what they have to see on a regular basis just breaks down their physical and mental defenses. Then at some point there's an accident or they get sick or…" Malcolm's words die off then, and his jaw tightens.

"Or they come down with a 'nasty opportunistic virus?" Tony finally asks him bluntly.

"Mer's too young for it to be starting already." Mal's words are fierce. "She's BARELY 57. "

Tony sighs, "I doubt very much that Pepper's going to be happy with your opinions vs the statistics."

"Statistics can go to hell. I've known that woman over 35 years. She's far too muleheaded to let anyone else tell her when or how she's going to die. And even if she weren't? I'm just as stubborn as she is, and I've got a fucking healing gift."

It's such an honest thing to say, so totally devoid of any social nicety, that Tony smiles in spite of himself.

"Besides," Malcolm continues, "With Meri and Pepper both there are other things to factor in…"

"Such as?"

"Such as the fact that none of the previous seers in their maternal line had bondmates or empathetic potential before this. The latter is a new development - unique to the two of them as far as I can tell, and there's no telling how it will affect things. That's true for Pepper especially since she also has a bondmate with empathic abilities."

Tony nods, then his forehead crinkles. "Are you implying that Meri's also empathic, or that she also had a bond mate? 'Cause I didn't think you could survive one of those dying unless the bond is severed first…?"

Tony's reasonably certain that he's taking things so calmly because he's mostly in denial, though he hadn't missed Mal's hint that having someone to share the load with might do a lot for Pepper…much like shock absorbers save a lot of wear and tear on the chassis of a car.

"The former. Meri's at minimum a one-directional receiver. Though she'd protest me labeling her 'people sense' as such. She thinks it's mostly common sense combined with a 'slightly heightened' intuition. Her words, not mine."

"Sounds like denial runs in Pepper's family." Tony can't help the way he bends over a little, bracing his hands on his knees as he tries to catch his breath. "So is she getting this talk while we're out here too, or is this whole issue something I'm going to have the pleasure of not trying to tell her about for awhile?"

"I'm assuming Meri has this topic in mind as part of their first heart to heart. In the meantime our first 'official' lesson is going to be to teach you how to shield certain things for at least the short term..."

Tony stands back up and tries to calm his unease. There's truly nothing to worry about yet, and no proof even that foretelling is Pepper's dominant gift when their bond is in balance and not screaming at them in any and all ways for attention. "That would be nice. Though what I'd really prefer is to keep to myself whatever level of pounding I've taken during my missions – at least until I get home. I know she may still have dreams, but hopefully we can blunt the impact of those if she doesn't also have to spend hours and hours obsessing over whatever it is that she thinks she did or didn't feel when I'm out there."

Malcolm nods. "Fair enough. Just be aware, though, that Pepper may have different views on what's most comforting for her during and after your missions. It's okay if you need to need focus in the heat of battle, but you have more leeway in the aftermath. You really may be wise to ask her what she wants as well without making too many arbitrary decisions - hell maybe just a suit-wired phone call would be comforting to both of you."

"I'll add it to the growing list of things we need to talk about." Not that it was an issue at the moment, since Tony could tell he was reaching his limit on how far he could currently get from Pepper without regretting it. Ironman wasn't going to be going anywhere for awhile still.

Not until he and Pepper figured out how to stretch the range on the link.

"So, Renfield," Tony allows himself a small grin, finally changing the topic of conversation. He's got plenty to process for once morning. "What are we really doing out here anyway? Something specific, or now that you've told me can we go back?"

Malcolm smirks, allowing the change to a much lighter subject matter. "I told Theresa and Meri that we'd be happy to hike out to the river and back. There's a great clay bank there and they're out of clay for their workshop."

Tony blinks. Looks down at the worn MIT tee he's wearing over a thermal shirt. "You're telling me you dragged me all the way out here to dig up and carry home MUD!?"

Malcolm grins. "Yup."

Tony groans. "For the record? Communes SUCK."

00oo00oo00

"They're doing WHAT?" Pepper asks in disbelief.

"He and Malcolm went out to the clay banks to get fresh earth for Theresa's latest project."

Pepper looks at the pair of canning jars she holding with a blank expression.

Tony, digging clay, with no Dummy, no suit, and no way to improvise a backhoe. She sighs, "I think he would have preferred to take a look at your non-functional generator." She's going to have to track down some kind of lotion or liniment because Tony is going to need the mother of all backrubs later. "Did Mal remember to take an extra pair of gloves with him?" Her forehead wrinkles. The only thing that was going to make Tony's attitude worse when the stiffness catches up with him are the blisters he'll end up with on his hands if her father didn't think to provide adequate protection...

Though she supposes Malcolm might simply choose to heal him if necessary. If only to demonstrate his secondary gift.

"I sent them out with Advil, Gatorade and a sturdy pair of gloves each, Ginny. Don't worry - Mal doesn't intend to keep them out there all day. He's just always found the clay bank to be a symbolically appropriate place to give his 'being empathic is a lot like being a professional potter' speech.'"

"A potter?" Pepper raises an eyebrow at the comparison.

"It involves a neat little tale he heard from a shaman once, about balancing on the thin line between useful and destructive malleability. Your father's a very big fan of using daily life to illustrate useful concepts given the opportunity."

"Which Tony will probably appreciate." Pepper nods. "Well assuming that Dad doesn't overdo it and lay on the metaphor too thick. Still be warned – he may be a little grumpy when he gets back. Hard physical labor is not his thing …"

Meri nods, "Don't worry – the plan at present is to have mid morning lessons for the both of you, with plenty of time to relax and wind down in the afternoons and evenings. We want this time to be beneficial for both of you – not unnecessarily exhausting."

Pepper suspects that the schedule described is really for Meri's sake just as much as for her and Tony's. Likely Mal had put his foot down. Though she admits looking at her that her aunt's coloring and appetite both were MUCH improved this morning.

"As for Tony – I wouldn't worry overmuch." Meri continues with a wink, "If the boy's too sore from all the digging you'll just have to take him up past the ridge and show off our miniature hot springs."

Pepper brightens. "Oh that's right…I totally forgot about those!"

Meri nods at that admission, then turns to look at the jars in Peppers hands - weighing their relative volume again the tomatoes currently peeled and waiting in the sink. "You know, I think I underestimated the size of Tom's harvest of the windfall tomatoes. We're going to be short. Mind helping me find the extra two boxes of jars upstairs?"

"Sure." Pepper sets the jars down. "I hope I'm being sent home with some of your apple and spaghetti sauce both."

"We can make a double batches of each if you like before you leave. I think I have enough extra cinnamon. Though we may need to go harvest some more fresh basil from outside if you want the marinara to really pop."

Meri leads the way through the pantry and up the stairs into the finished attic as she speaks. "Good Lord," she exclaims, turning on the light switch and sneezing into the silence as she does so. "When exactly when did this place get so dusty? Sorry about the mess, Virginia, I haven't really been up here much since early last spring…"

Pepper just blinks at the space that had once been her mother's bedroom and paint studio.

It's virtually unchanged, but for the fact the bed has been moved to the far window, and the shelving that used to hold paint and canvases now holds an assortment of cardboard boxes and wooden crates. Still - the light from the windows, the now silent clock on the wall...hell, even the ancient record player on the painted dresser looks the same.

"Wow," she murmurs softly to herself. This room had once seemed...so much bigger. Definitely filled with more possibilities. She doesn't know if that's changed because she's bigger and older now, or if it's just from the other boxes of miscellaneous household wares that are now taking up floor space.

"Smaller than you remember?" Meri murmurs.

Pepper nods.

Meri reaches out to pat her shoulder gently. "Your father said pretty much the same thing you know, the last time he came up here. I don't think most people realized how much the mirrors your mom hung on the walls helped to open this space up. It was a neat little optical illusion."

Pepper picks up a faint trace of sadness from Meri. Considers what she's just said and decides that the description might well have applied to her mother in general…a woman who'd usually appeared so happy and carefree, but in reality had been anything but.

Amelia had always been confined by what she'd seen as the unjust limitations of her life. Of course most of said limitations had been constructs of her own.

"This is...it's still 'Mom's room,' isn't it?" she finally asks. The woman's presence still lingers...though thank God it's not a true shrine.

Still it's been decades, and space in the main house has always been at a premium. She's surprised they never renovated it.

Well at least before they'd build the third and fourth outside cabins.

Meri just shrugs. "To be honest, Virginia, I suspect it always will be. We talked about maybe converting it for other uses a few times…but in the end decided to keep things the same. You father liked coming up here occasionally when he visited. We also hoped that you'd both be back for good one day – and the room would have been yours to change if you'd wanted it. And after Sunny – well we wanted to leave some place in the world where your mother had occasionally been at peace."

Pepper reaches over and takes Meri's hand, squeezing it reassuringly. "I understand. Some people just fill up a room with their presence whether they're in it or not. Mom loved painting in this attic. She never ever found a place with better light. And believe me she tried…" She looks around again and shrugs. "To be honest…I wonder sometimes why it was that she even left…"

Meri sighs softly. "Probably because at first at least, your father and I encouraged the move."

Pepper blinks at that information, but Meri isn't quite finished explaining.

"Now mind you, at the time we thought that you both would just be away for a little while – six months or so I figured, time enough for Amelia to spread her wings and spend some quality one on one time alone with you while she entered in a couple of the national art shows. She was feeling undervalued, you see, and nothing we said or did here at Rohan seemed to help alleviate it."

The older woman shrugged. "I thought that it was an issue of self confidence – that it might do your mom good to go out there and get a feel for the true worth of her art talent. To start to appreciate the opportunities that she had instead of the things that she didn't." Meri's voice grows quiet. "We…I couldn't read her like everyone else, Ginny. I never foresaw that she'd ultimately refuse to come back." Meri shakes herself, clearly trying to shake off the mood. "She enjoyed seeing new places too much. Said the thrill of discovery gave her inspiration. And she swore up and down that it wasn't hurting you."

Pepper notes how carefully Meri doesn't mention whether the choice had hurt Amelia's bondmate or her adoptive sister both. She also makes a mental note to talk with Malcolm about her mother's gifts. Tony's theory about her mother being a talent 'dead zone' was starting to look more and more likely.

"I guess that's right, in a sense. I mean, I never struggled in school because of all the moves or anything. And we had a room like this, wherever we were. This was the little piece of home that was always available. A little familiarity makes a lot of things bearable...what more can you ask…" The next box makes an odd sound when Pepper pulls it forward a little. A sound like glass knocking on glass. "Hey looks like I found...wait...never mind. It's not the jars after all."

Instead the box is filled with ancient newspapers, books and...black and white photographs? "This looks a bit like you as a girl..." Pepper murmurs as she gently pulls out the image on top, feeling a smile creep up the edges of her mouth. The face staring back isn't quite Meri's - but there's a definite resemblance nonetheless.

"Lord Sake, that's Mary Grace Patton McKinney..." Meri murmurs. "Pull it out would you, Pepper, and meet your progenitor...in blood and talent both."

"She was like we are? She was a seer I mean?" Pepper supposes that 's the best way to phrase it since even she and Meri's talents aren't exactly the same.

After all Meri's gift can function when she's awake. Pepper just has her dreams.

Meri just nods. "Yes. She had waking flash forwards...forewarnings she called them, that provided glimpses of major events that were going to affect both her friends and her family. She and her husband moved out to this ranch from ...hmm...Los Angeles, I think just before the turn of the century."

Meri shrugs. "I'm afraid I don't remember much more about her than that without consulting the papers and journals that should also be in that box. It's just been too many decades since your grandparents made your mother and I memorize the lineage... "

Pepper nods, intrigued by stories of relatives that until now, had remained all but nameless... "They...Mom's parents, were your maternal aunt and uncle, right? Your mother and my grandmother were sisters?"

"Yes. Born on the west coast in... 1934 and 1937 respectively. Your grandfather was name Howard…though he preferred 'Ward.' Your grandmother was Lacy."

"What were they like?"

"Sharp as whips. Big on common sense and plain speaking."

'Like you then.' Pepper nods. "I wish I'd had the chance to meet them – at least just once."

Meri nods, "I understand...though you should take comfort in the fact that when that storm hit, they went out together. Which is right. Sunny and I were both near grown by that point and I doubt they would have survived a week without the other."

"How did..." Pepper shift uncomfortably. "Meri, how did your parents die? Mom never said."

"Carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning heater. They didn't have the ceiling alarms for it in those days..."

"God I'm sorry." Pepper's not sure how to ask the question. "Did you...did you have any 'warning' before it happened? Any clue as to what was coming?"

Meri shakes her head. "Unfortunately no. My 'sight' hadn't emerged yet at that point...it 'broke through' I suppose is the best term, later that same summer shortly after I turned thirteen."

'Damn,' Pepper thinks to herself. "And I thought that this initial year has been pretty rough for ME."

"It has been." Meri sorts carefully though the box, apparently looking for something. "Don't devalue your own experiences in light of someone else's. Your father and I did a lot of talking last night while we were waiting to see if that foal was going to drop or not. Honey, it's not easy to be in two places at once. It's one of the reasons the women in our lineage tend to wear themselves out. But you - you spent three months with part of yourself across the planet. It's amazing you lasted as long as you did."

Meri stops when she finds an old, leather-bound journal, starting to fray along the spine and dotted here in there with the stains of old age. "The truth of the matter is, I almost came out to Los Angeles after word of Anthony's disappearance hit the televisions. Not because I KNEW you were suffering, but because I could guess from what you had written about how much you loved your job in your occasional letters. But I'd made such a fuss with your father about how you couldn't be forced into the knowledge of the gifts you had that I couldn't quite justify making the trip. Not when I'd 'seen' Anthony would make his own way back given time." She snorts softly. "Besides. As selfish as it is for me to say, I never could get on a plane without getting queasy. And something tells me that even if I managed to brave the plane out to see you, I would have only been volunteering for another one when I saw you."

"What do you mean?" Pepper asks softly after Meri doesn't say anything else.

Meri glances up from the book in her lap. "Oh, just that if what your father's said is true, what you really needed was to be shipped over to Afghanistan yourself. I didn't know it until last night of course, but your dad believes that if that if you'd gone over there while Tony was missing, the bond probably would have asserted itself enough for you to track him down. I don't know how we would have managed to explain THAT to the military, but what's done is done."

She passes the book to Pepper. "There...this is the first of several books that are now officially yours... This is volume one of Mary's personal journal...starting the year her powers manifested and ending the year she passed away. The way I see it, sometimes the best way to try and figure out how to walk a path is see how it was traversed by the ones who walked before you." Meri shrugs. "I really ought to make myself sit down and write out some thoughts as well…during the cooler months I mean, but there just never seems to be the time. Besides to be honest, writing's never come natural to me."

"Are they…are they all about foresight?" Pepper runs her the tips of her fingers over the gilt embossing which has nearly all been worn away. "Because to be honest, Meri, I don't think that's really my primary...thing. At least it wasn't until my boss started getting himself shot at on a regular basis anyway." She sighs deeply. "And even then they're hardly more than dreams I can barely distinguish from reality. Or is that just how foresight works, most of the time?"

"Depends on the person, honestly. Mary Grace wrote about seeing silent moving pictures, and her daughter swore she just heard people talking in a room that was absolutely dark. I get all of the above…hell with what feels like emotional feedback as well, when I'm seeing certain people…"

The older woman shrugs, "As for primary vs secondary gifts… I take it that you have your father's empathy as well?"

Pepper nods.

"And it's active in your dreams?"

She nods again and Meri winces. "God, I'm sorry...that's particularly exhausting. If you like I'll tell you about some tricks I've learned that may help with maintaining your subconscious shielding during the times that you're asleep."

"That can be done?"

"In some cases yes. You just need to find the right method. Most of power control is just tricking the subconscious mind into doing what you need it too, in my experience."

Pepper's about to say more when her head just kinda...throbs. The sensation makes her gasp, and in that soft sound she hears something of her father's voice though she can't tell what it is that he's saying. Whatever it is, she can only assume is being said to Tony though, and that it's enough to make the throbbing sensation in her head move down to her stomach.

"What's wrong?" Meri's cool hand on the back of her neck helps Pepper focus a little. And predictably, what she focuses on is Tony. She's had this sick, sinking sensation once before; that night on the balcony of the Disney Concert Hall when she'd realized Tony wasn't coming back. It was probably around the same time that Obadiah was confirming that he did NOT have Tony's best interests at heart.

"Tony…Tony's upset," Pepper murmurs, trying to reach out between the echoes of distress that are rebounding down their bond and the actual distress being pinned behind Tony's shields. "No…no, not upset. More…scared-slash-anxious. Mal's said something that's upset him, but I can't see what it is."

Meri considers that silently for a moment or so. Then her face darkens, and she starts cursing softly. "Stubborn, obsessive _aggravating_ man. I told him to wait...hell, I told him not to bring it up at all this trip if he could possibly help it."

"What?" The reverberations are getting better, and as far as Pepper can tell, Tony is managing to calm himself down. And pretty quickly too. Perhaps Mal had been merely been blatantly tactless in whatever it was he'd been sharing.

"Your father has…a theory of sorts. He's been chewing on it for years now."

"Concerning?"

"Foresight and its impact on the lifespans of the affected women in our family."

"What?" Pepper lets go of the link since Tony obviously isn't keen on sharing at the moment and she better than anyone can appreciate having privacy in your own head. "There's some sort of abnormal correlation there that I should be aware of?"

"No...." Meri says. "At least, it wouldn't appear so if your father would take other factors than psychic talents into consideration. Things like limited health care, for example." Meri sighs.

"Look, I'll be honest with you, Virginia: the women in our family who've had the gift of foresight do have a hard time making it past their 60th birthday. However, the last woman with a demonstrable talent was my grandmother. Your great-grandmother. And she absolutely HATED doctors. Which had to play a role in things."

"So what you're telling me is that the sample size isn't big enough to be drawing such finite conclusions."

"I'm saying that your father has always been a little overly attached to the notion of 'fate' as opposed to personal choice," Meri says bluntly. "Yes, life does throw out the occasional surprise from time to time – and it's not always pleasant, but we still get to choose - if not the road itself, then the way that we decide we're going to walk it."

Pepper nods and takes another deep breath. "So don't panic then, is what you're saying. And don't let Dad freak Tony out." She grimaces, "All right then… so can I slap Mal when he gets back to the house, Meri, or are you reserving the privilege? Because Tony already has massive separation issues that I manage to get flared up without any help."

"You can have a second round with your father after I say my piece to him." Meri says very calmly. Though the look in her eyes lead Pepper to believe her father's not going to find his day made all that easy upon he and Tony's return.

Another deep breath, and Pepper nods. "Okay then. In the meantime we should probably find those jars and get started on the applesauce and marinara, because I don't think I'm going to be much help this afternoon." Most likely she's going to be spending it metaphorically peeling bits of Tony off of the ceiling.

"How about we just put off the canning till tomorrow, Hon? The clay bank's too far for me to WALK but if seeing Anthony is going to ease your mind, it's only about a half hour's ride."

Pepper's tempted, but she eventually shakes her head. "No, I think letting Tony wear himself out _before_ I see him is a good idea. But we can still put the canning off, if you're not in any large hurry." Pepper hefts the book in her lap. "To be honest you have gotten me interested in the family history. I've had so little chance to study up on it before…"

Meri chuckles. "That's just fine, honey. Nothing in the kitchen can't keep. Read to your heart's content and let me know if you have any questions. Your grandparents were good folk…both deserve remembering."

Pepper nods. "I only wish I could have met them at least once. Mom wasn't big on talking about this sort of thing…"

Meri nods. "Yes, well the past we have here in spades, as you're no doubt come to regret if Tommy makes good on his threat to dig out the oldest of the commune's photo albums later this evening…"

"Oh God," Pepper groans. "Please tell me you DESTROYED the chicken pox snapshots and the ones from the year that I trick or treated as Pippi Longstocking…"

Meri snorts. "It was one Halloween, Sprite. One day of a year. It's not like we dressed you up that way all the time. 'Sides, you make it sound as if you've never seen Anthony in a position that's equally compromising…which I VERY much doubt given his rather...notable.. reputation."

Pepper blushes at the same time she snickers. "Okay, I'll have to concede that you have me there."

Meri chuckles, "Second impressions are just as important as first ones, in my experience. If you doubt me on that, just ask your father sometime how he and I met."

"Why not tell me about yourself?" Pepper tilts her head, curious.

Meri just waves a hand, but Pepper can see her repressed amusement. "Nah…he narrates it far, far better than I can."

Pepper raises an eyebrow. "Sure he does. You and Dad just both enjoy being seen as mysterious don't you?"

Meri's lips curve up. "I do consider it to be one of advantages of my advanced aged, yes."

"Uhm hmm. You were just as bad at twenty in my memory, Meri."

She clucks at that, "Bite your tongue and help me carry down these boxes."

Pepper laughs, following the elder woman down the stairs.


	14. Chapter 15

"Come on up." Pepper extends one hand down to a dubious looking Tony. The dubiousness might be due to the fact that he hadn't seemed to notice her coming, but it also might be... "You're not going to pull me out of the saddle, and Champ CAN carry us both."

Tony studies her for a moment – his eyes linger a little too long on the battered, floppy straw cowboy hat keeping the sun off her face – before nodding and reaching for her hand. He grunts a little as he plants one foot in the stirrup and swings up behind her. "So where are we going exactly? 'Cause I could really use a snack first...clay digging's serious business."

Pepper snorts quietly to herself. "Check the saddle bags. I know Meri packed at least one of them with snacks." She sighs in contentment at the way Tony pauses, just for a second, to bury his nose in the back of her neck. "We're gonna get out of here for awhile while till the waters have cleared..."

"Trouble brewing?" Tony takes another deep breath before leaning over to check one of the saddle bags. It's full of...towels. He shakes his head and checks the other one, coming up with a Ziplock bag of jerky.

"Mmmm..." Pepper makes the non-committal sound before warning him, "Better hold on, just in case." Only after he's got an arm wrapped around her waist does Pepper turn Champ around with a few soft clucks and set him east. "Meri's unhappy with Mal at the moment, and she's had a short nap…which means she can lecture to her heart's content. Rather than stay and listen, *I* thought we'd hit the hot springs."

"There are HOT springs?" Tony raises an eyebrow.

"Yes...about a thirty minute ramble from here up on the far side of the property. I thought it might do you good to spend a few hours soaking out your aches."

Tony grunts a little in approval. "Um Pep...I don't remember packing a bathing suit."

"You didn't. But don't worry; no one else was signed up for today and Meri can keep Dad away. There's also a small cabin nearby – emergency shelter, really, but a place to hitch up Champ here and to lay you out for a massage after your soak."

"Twist my arm why don't you?" Tony grins into her back. "So how're you doing? Head feeling okay?" Pepper had woken up with a bit of a headache that morning.

"Much better, as you can probably tell. I think it was probably caffeine withdrawal more than anything else. Not enough coffee the last couple of days." There's no need to share the way he'd blown a fuse in her head yet. That can wait to be shared along with the reason WHY Meri's unhappy with Mal. Which is going to wait until she's got him submerged in hot water with his clothes out of reach so he can't run for the hills - so to speak.

"What did you and Meri talk about?" Tony finishes the jerky and decides to wait until they stop before he scrounges for anything else to eat. Instead he wraps his other arm around Pepper as well and rests his temple on her shoulder.

"A couple of things. My grandparents for one. I finally know both their names."

"You didn't before?"

"Nope. Never really got to meet them. They died several years before I was born and Mom didn't tend to talk about them much."

"Any particular reason why?"

Pepper shrugs. "Not that she mentioned...but..." She thinks back over her childhood, recalling a moment of silence that had happened here or there. "I think there may have been hurt feelings between them, though I don't know why. Meri and I stuck mostly to the older family history."

That made sense, Pepper supposed, if Meri's 'horse sense' also worked on people she'd have known what topics to avoid for the moment at least. The subject of Amelia Potts was still a tender one for both of them even after decades.

"We were originally looking for canning jars," Pepper finally adds. "We didn't find them. But we did find a bunch of journals that were written by my great-great...yeah, that's the right number. By my great-great-grandmother. After that I spent the rest of the morning trying to read some very elaborate cursive from some very old paper. Meri said I could take the books when we go home, and I thought maybe I could work with Jarvis to get digital copies made of them."

Tony thinks about that; Jarvis's optical scanners should be up for the task. "Find anything interesting?" He's genuinely interested in what she might have found out, but there's a part of him that really means, did she find anything that could be used to generate data on psychic phenomena.

"Short of where my addiction to sauerkraut comes from? Not much." Pepper shrugs. "Though I will admit - reading about someone else's experiences with seeing the future was...interesting." She chuckles a little, "And surprisingly, kind of amusing. Not all of the stuff Mary saw regarding her husband was always G rated. And that was LONG before they'd even started courting."

"I thought Meri wasn't ever married..." Tony's brow wrinkles and Pepper takes a moment to process the statement.

"No, no...I'm still talking about Mary Grace, not Merilee."

"Mary Grace. That's a nice name. Almost like my mom's." Tony sighs deeply. "If we ever have a little girl, let's name her Maria Grace. We'll start a new family tradition."

Pepper angles her head around, but all she can really see is the top of Tony's head. "Putting the cart before the horse, aren't you, Stark?" Then, "...I suppose that'd work as long as you don't call her Gracie."

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's right up there with 'Bambi' and 'Candy.'"

Tony snorts, "Note to self Pepper doesn't like 'ee' names. I doubt it will be an issue, Pep. In my father's family at least, the girls were always heavily outnumbered by the boys."

Pepper chuckles slightly. "Then you were always Anthony then?"

"When my father was present, yes...he was pretty damn convinced I would be a boy. I may have been Isabelle a few times in utero when it was just Mom and I, though."

"You do have a certain regal prissy-ness that could have pulled off Isabelle."

Tony smacks her on the hip, in retaliation. "Yes well, at least I wouldn't have been stuck with a moniker like Malcolm Edmond Renfield Keith-Behyr the FOURTH..."

Pepper blinks. "Good GOD."

"Congratulations, Pep. From what your father told me, you are officially as 'Yuppie Blue Blood' as me."

"Wait, wait, wait. RENFIELD? As in 'Bud -that misogynistic CEO of Renfield Aeronautics who's always trying to tell stories to top you - Renfield?'" Pepper shudders. "We're RELATED? Okay, can I now somehow disinfect my GENES?"

"That's the one. The next time he tries to convince you how much you two have in common, you can really clue him in. That should get him off your back…" Tony has to laugh softly when Pepper shudders again, more vehemently this time. "I get the feeling your dad is of the same opinion regarding the guy." They ride on in silence for a moment before Tony adds, "Though you know, the family link explains one quirk in you at least. I always wondered about the expensive heel fetish in someone as otherwise practical as you."

"What? You're claiming you DON'T have an entire closet of ridiculously expensive Italian suits?"

"Not the same. The suits are a status symbol."

"And you think my shoes aren't?" Pepper scoffs. "The woman with the best shoes wins, Tony. Always."

"Is this some kind of weird businesswoman code I've never been told about?"

"Businesswoman? No. It's common to all women. Men don't care what kind of shoes you have on - just that you can get the job done. It's the women being kicked out of your bed that needed to know who the top bitch was. And it wasn't them." 'Ever,' Pepper almost adds in a mental growl.

Tony picks up on a bit of that tone and just shakes his head. "Has anyone ever told you that you're hot when showing your teeth?" If he's honest, it's probably half of why he hired her, if not more than half. The depth and complexity of female posturing tended to be EPIC in his opinion. Having someone around who could cut through the preliminaries sped things up considerably.

"You have. Repeatedly. Of course, you were usually drunk at the time, so it probably doesn't count. Now, on the other hand there were women who understood what they were getting into with you and they were honestly ready to be shown the way to the door after a fling. In their case the shoes meant I had fabulous taste and was clearly making you pay me my due, so they didn't need to pity me."

Tony raises one eyebrow. There's something she's not telling. "And other times?"

"I proved that I could more than back up my claim to the territory." There's a self-satisfied tone in Pepper's voice that amuses the hell out of Tony. A queen quite aware and pleased with her throne. "Before you can say what you're thinking: I marked my territory with a very well heeled pair of size eights and the trailing scent of Burberry for Women." Christine for one had paid the price of NOT showing her potentially very dignified belly.

Tony just shakes his head. "You know, I used to wonder why ninety percent of the men and women on the Board were so quick to yield to you - even if they were 'technically' your superiors..." He catches sight of a low set building up ahead. "Kind of clears that one up. Also, have I ever mentioned that your kick ass mode is hotter than hell?"

"Yes. Multiple times. Also while you were drunk. And once when you weren't, as an aside to someone else while I was chewing out a delivery boy trying to plant recording devices in one of the conference rooms." Pepper carefully guides Champ down a slight slope and then around a sharp bend hemmed in by boulders...and then they've arrived.

The hot springs are a series of interconnected pools, surrounded by whatever the indigenous rock is. It even looks as if someone's made an effort at landscaping - ferns and other kinds of cascading plants grow immediately around the pools.

"The springs generate enough heat to keep the ground between them from freezing in the winter, unless the weather is unusually harsh," Pepper mentions as she dismounts and waits for Tony to do the same. There's an open-sided shelter set off to the side of a small cabin that she leads the horse to. There's a trough and a faucet set into the wall; Pepper swivels the faucet out - apparently to run out any rust from the pipes - before filling the trough with water. She removes Champ's saddle and hands Tony the bags, briefly reaching into one for an apple. "He'll get fed tonight, but right now he gets a treat for pulling double duty."

Tony nods. "This place is AMAZING."

"That's Eli's doing. He's sheer genius with plants. Though he - and Theresa for that matter - would tell you these pools have a special resonance too...whether magnetic or chemical. I wasn't kidding about the soaking away the soreness, Tony. People just heal faster from injury when they spend time in these."

"Would it be okay to get some water samples for analysis?"

"I'd imagine so. Though you need to ask Eli. Just be warned not everything can be explained by a spectrometer though."

Tony just shrugs, already consumed with the question the springs represent. He's going to need to come back out here with some sample jars or something, and probably Eli as well because it'd be nice to take some dirt and rock samples too, and he doesn't want to upset any sort of delicate vegetative balance -

Tony blinks as Pepper appears in the midst of his musings. Naked. In the water.

"Mrppppppghhhhh," he manages after a moment.

Pepper laughs aloud. "Shut off the brain for awhile and lose the clothes, Stark," she grins.

He swallows hard and obeys, ditching his clothes in roughly five seconds and joining her up close and personal in one of the smaller pools. Standing, the water is just waist high. Sitting, there's enough room for two people to stretch out; a gentle incline at one end of the pool can only be man made, an indication that a reclined position is not only possible, but encouraged.

Pepper sighs as he wraps his arms around her and pushes her back against the stone. "The water makes my skin tingle," she murmurs. Her hands slide up his shoulders and start stroking in broad motions; not a massage, but a confirmation of nearness. "Starting to feel better?" she asks - though it's really a silly question. In this position she can FEEL the tension - physical and not - slipping free.

His only response is a partial nod before he starts doting kisses down her neck and across her collarbone.

"Want to talk now or after about whatever Mal said to scare the hell out of you?" Pepper sighs and shifts her body to align more comfortably with his.

"After," he admits after a brief pause. "Right now..." he reaches out with body and mind both. "I just need to touch you."

"So far you're doing an excellent job. Head of the class." Tony can't stray too far with his mouth, thanks to the water, but his hands are definitely making up for it, pulling soft moans from her lips as strokes her sides...up, down, up, down, up over her breasts.

"I assume it's not just the water making you tingle anymore."

"Nope." Her legs rise to wrap around his thighs. "Though the buoyancy's interesting..."

"I'll show you buoyant..." He nibbles her earlobe playfully.

"Promises, promises," Pepper murmurs as she bends her head to nibble at his earlobe in return. The gesture guarantees she has his full attention immediately.

"You know...you're less likely to drown when we come if we switch so that you're on top of me..."

Pepper smiles to hear the deep throated rumble in his tone. "Not to mention it'll get my breasts above the waterline," she can't help but observe dryly as she helps him make the transition.

"You had mentioned a long hard ride..." he murmurs, head bending forward to suckle a nipple gently.

"For the horse. I think you're getting long and leisurely, with plenty of time to admire the scenery." Pepper braces both hands against Tony's shoulders, at once distracted by the man doing his best to hurry her along, and by the irreverent thought that it's a good thing that implant of his is waterproof. An electric one was not the kind of charge she's looking for.

Tony's abrupt laugh indicates the thought had passed down the bond just as he lifts her by the hips enough to line them up and then lets gravity do the rest.

"Oooooooooooh…" they murmur together. The sensation is unique...heat and warmth flowing in from literally all sides. It seems to roll, almost wave like, all the way down their bond. Below her, Tony closes his eyes in something like bliss. Pepper can't help but to reach for his face, laying her hand gently against his stubble-covered cheek.

Very slowly his eyes open to gaze up at her and she can't stop herself from saying, "I'm right here. And I don't plan on going anywhere."

"I know," he murmurs back, reaching up and interlocking both of her hands with his.

There's more to it than that; Pepper can feel it. She can feel everything that's been building up in him for hours now – shock, trepidation, and a frustrating sense of general helplessness. She can also feel that he can't tell her about any of it right now, not when it's still all gut reaction and raw emotion, unprocessed and incoherent.

So she does the mental equivalent of stroking a hand up and down his spine as she leans down to softly kiss him. He returns the gesture with equal tenderness, anchoring them both in the moment. Comfort plays as real a role as passion in this.

Pepper starts moving gently, barely disturbing the water. Out here, away from everyone, there's no reason not to drop her shields and let him get as close to her as possible. Her shields slip down easier this time, perhaps because of practice, perhaps because there's so little pressure on them right now. In less than five minutes they're as much mind to mind as they are chest to chest.

"Love you. Need you." Tony shifts minutely. He picks up the speed of their movements, hands tightly holding her hips till the end.

When they finally come the pool seems to echo back the ripples for a slow eternity. "I love you too." She murmurs into his neck.

000ooo000ooo000ooo000ooo000ooo

"Don't want to, and you can't make me."

Pepper studies the man beside her with equal measures of exasperation and amusement. "Fine." She heaves herself out of the pool before she starts growing gills, and pulls a towel out of the nearby saddlebags. "I'm going inside though." And sooner or later he was going to join her because she could still feel the unease of pending separation worming through him, though it'd settled a great deal in the last hour or so.

She grabs her clothes and the sack with the food and towels and heads inside, sighing in relief as she was enveloped into the cool shade of the cabin. She's just managed to wring the majority of the dampness out of her hair when she hears Tony enter as well.

"Towel?" She gestures to where she put their things on the low padded, benches. There's a rustling sound, then the soft sound of terrycloth rubbing briskly across skin.

"So how long are we hiding here? Figure it's safe to go back yet?"

"Meri only packed us a snack. So I assume we're expected back for dinner." Pepper quickly rubs down the rest of her body before tugging on her undergarments and her shirt. "Meri's very straightforward….which means we can safely assume that the initial chewing out stage has probably passed; I bet Mal is sitting at the kitchen table, pouting while Meri gently explains why panicking potential son-in-laws is generally frowned upon."

Tony just shakes his head, "You know, for all this talk of her bawling your dad out, I can't even IMAGINE her yelling..."

"I'll allow you your illusions. They might not last long. No, don't put that on." Pepper pulls the shirt out of Tony's hand. "Rubdown, remember?"

Tony grins, "I'm not going to argue with that one....where do you want me?"

'Everywhere.' Pepper gestures to the bench. "Sit down on the floor in front of that. The extra height will give me a little extra traction."

He sinks with a contented groan into what looks suspiciously like a natural lotus position.

She raises an eyebrow, going to sit behind him. "You know, that looked almost fluid...like someone took Yoga in his younger years or something..."

"Yoga? Me? I claim the right to non-self-incrimination."

Her lips twitch a little. "Let me guess...one of the other students or the instructor was 'hot.'"

"No self incrimination, Potts, remember?" He yawns a little as he leans back into her hands. "What happened to that bear trap of a mind that made me hire you?"

"You hired me on a whim," she points out. "The 'bear trap of a mind' is what KEPT me employed."

Tony snickers. "True," he admits after a moment. He groans as her fingers find and dig firmly into the muscles above and on either side of his clavicle. "So...not to be blunt or anything, but how long exactly have your dad and Meri been an item?"

Pepper pauses her massage. "What?"

"Your Dad and Meri..."

"Yes you already said that."

"So…how long have they been lovers?"

There's a protracted moment of silence. Then, "They're NOT." Pepper says.

He turns his head and raises his brow. "Seriously? Cause their vibe…well I guess I just assumed. They're pretty intimate Pep…"

"They've been friends since before I was born," Pepper says. "They both have talents they've had to work hard to master. They both loved and were...were hurt by my mom. They're close, yes -"

"So it's normal that he's putting food on her plate at dinner and sneaking bacon off it at breakfast? That he's all over her personal space?" Well on a certain level. Though Mal hovered he didn't actually appear to TOUCH his friend all that often…well in public at least.

Considering how easily he touched everyone else that fact was interesting in itself.

"Yes. No. I mean, yes, they're not lovers. Why would you even think...?" Pepper huffs a little. He's surprised her, and she doesn't really like it.

Tony just shrugs, then sits up, chewing his lower lip. "I just assumed from the body language and the way he took the news of her illness yesterday…" He pauses, as if something completely new has occurred to him. "Uhm Pep have you ever considered that the fact they're not lovers might actually be Meri's PROBLEM?"

Pepper frowns - and makes Tony frown when she pulls her hands away. "You mean her health problems?"

"Maybe. Think back to yesterday – the ride here in the truck. What exactly were the symptoms the others described?"

"Weight loss, exhaustion, lack of appetite..." Pepper's voice trails of in mid sentence. 'Oh SHIT...'

She rubs her hands over her face. "Fine. I'll agree that it looks… suspicious. But Dad was bonded to Mom, Tony. He verified it himself. So what are the chances of his ALSO having a bond with her cousin?"

Tony considers the question, than shrugs, "Decent, actually if whatever made your mom 'attractive' to him was a 'family trait' genetically. And if it's not…you said yourself she's one of his oldest and closest friends."

Pepper just looks at him a long moment, and Tony finally sighs. "Look I just have questions okay…Meri's obviously NOT afraid of doctors . Well either that or she hides the fear very well. She's EXCRUCIATINGLY common sense though - so why drag her feet about going to Omaha if that's what her doctor thinks is necessary for her to get better?"

"Would YOU want to be poked at if you could see - and I mean that literally - that given time everything will put itself to right on its own? Besides, Meri doesn't go into cities. Other people's anxiety wears her down. She doesn't…" Pepper pauses because she's not sure how exactly she knows what she does. "It's like her personal shields are stuck open somehow, and she can't close them all the way anymore. Going to a doctor in a congested urban area would probably be more painful for her than simply waiting things out."

Tony looks thoughtful, "Her shields are STUCK open?" He emphasizes her choice of words, then wrinkles his forehead… "What – and Mal can't help her with that problem like he did with OUR shielding when it was out of whack...?"

"If he knows. If she's even willing to let him try." Both are debatable in Pepper's opinion, given that Meri's views are very similar to her concerning privacy. Pepper huffs impatiently. "Tony, for the record my gifts are like a nightlight when compared to the fusion reactor that I get the occasional glimpse of when I really 'look' at Meri."

Which scares her a little, if she's honest with herself, because if she's reading her father right, then he and her are about on par "talent" wise.

She can feel the depth of his power and feel a like "echo" in herself. Can Malcolm really handle shielding someone like Meri without hurting himself in the process? Was that the reason the older woman had presumably never asked?

Pepper doesn't know, and its one too many worries for her to process at the moment, so she shakes her head, "I don't....I don't think...oh never mind..." She exhales, frustrated.

"Irregsrdless, they're NOT a couple. Dad would have TOLD ME if they were."

Tony nods, studying her a little cautiously, "And if that were to change…would you have an issue with that?"

She shakes her head, then shrugs, "I don't know…It's just…I'm not sure it'd be SAFE for either of them honestly."

Now Tony's really confused, and Pepper sighs, wondering how in hell they'd wound up in this discussion to begin with.

"Look…Meri's great…but she's also…She feels like she's CHANGED...from what I remember as a child. The same personality for the most part, yes…but internally MUCH more complex." God, Pepper hates spoken language sometimes. Because these concepts are just too nebulous to put into words adequately, and she's not sure he'd get it even if she were to attempt to 'show' him...

She clears her throat and continues on wearily. "Maybe it's her age. Maybe it's how much experience she's had over the years. Hell maybe it's just the result of years of training… But what do I know? No more than you really."

She draws a deep breath, and clears her mind, "You know who would know, though Tony? Mal. He's known Meri longer than me, and this is essentially his profession. Surely he's got enough experience to notice if something's altered in the currents between them… If he doesn't suspect something after all these years, then maybe that's because there's nothing there to suspect."

Pepper's a little surprised to find herself across the room from Tony; she hadn't been aware of getting up to pace. She's also surprised by the lack of reaction coming from her…lover is as good a term as any, she supposes. He's just standing and watching her, not agreeing or disagreeing with anything she's just said.

"Alright then." He finally concedes. But his expression is one she'd familiar with. His brain is still processing, chewing on pieces of an internal puzzle that all too often only he seems to see.

"You don't agree," She finally concludes after a moment.

"I'm not sure what I think," Tony admits. "I just know SOMETHING about this whole situation makes my brain itch. And I've always believed that if it looks like, walks like and talks like a duck...well, 'quack,' you know?"

Pepper relaxes suddenly, smiling at the joke. How very like Tony to reassert levity through humor.

She walks back across the room and sits back down behind him. "Look – just promise me that you're not going to go blundering into this topic with Meri or Dad, Tony. Seriously. Mom's still a bruised spot for both of them …but they're a comfort to each other even in spite of that. I would…it would be unbelievably cruel to say anything that might ruin that. Besides, I'm traumatized enough already without having to tell my father he needs to have sex with his oldest and dearest friend.

I mean it, Stark…" she says in a sharp voice when she can FEEL the mental weighing of pros and cons going on in Tony's head. "We've been here a DAY. That's not enough time to be voicing theories of any kind." She reaches up to rub her forehead. "God - you're no better than Malcolm are you? What is there some kind of obsessive personality trait in male psychics or something?"

"Oh yes. Because only men obsess." Tony rolls his eyes. "Speaking of having no appetite..." He turns and wraps his arms around her waist. "YOU should probably eat, Pep. It's been hours since lunch."

"I was working on that when you first came in." Pepper admits. "So was the jerky plain or teriyaki?"

"Regular I think."

Pepper makes an approving cluck and turns to find the bag with the food. "Ooooooooh and candied apricots too. Yummy."

"Apricots...I never saw any of those." Tony reaches over to try one as well only to have the small bag pulled back out of his reach.

"I found them first." Pepper informs him territorially…

He quirks an eyebrow, "So what…you're entitled to them all?" He snorts when she nods, "That doesn't sound particularly equitable Miss Potts."

"Equity Schmequity. You can have the honey roasted peanuts."

Tony's eyes narrow, causing Pepper to move a little farther away to protect her find. "You're the one who wanted me to eat something." She defends herself.

"Eat yes. Turn into a food hoarder no. I can't convince you to share just ONE? I'm sure that I could…" He siddles closer, "…find a way to make it worth your while..." He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Pepper debates - then, "You've got nothing I want. I think I've gotten everything out of you that I'll get for a few hours."

Tony raises the other eyebrow. Debates for a moment. While he could probably disprove that statement, they would only end up late for dinner. Finally he just shrugs and snorts, "Fine. So where's the food that I'm to be 'allowed', then?"

Pepper shrugs, popping another piece of dried fruit in her mouth, "Other side of the saddlebag with the water I think."

Tony nods, and opens the pack to find a sack of cashews as well as a sack of honey roasted peanuts. There's also a separate bag of apricots with his name written in bold scrawl across it.

There's a note tucked inside in precise cursive - 'Even as a kid, some things Ginny HATED to share. Drink lots of water with these, Anthony, or you'll end up dehydrated and need more asprin. Please know that I expect you two to help me prep dinner at six."

He snorts at that, rips open the bag of cashews, palms a few and then pops a piece of the dried fruit in his mouth before holding up the note for Pepper's viewing.

"Her esteemed creepiness says we're on KP tonight."

00oo00oo00oo

"This was YOU?"

"You don't need to sound so disbelieving."

Tony snorts to himself as he looks down at the photo album spread across he and Pepper's laps. In one of the pictures a gangly, wavy haired teenager waves up at the camera from his seat at long wooden picnic table. Beside him, two girls –Theresa and Sunny presumably - are sipping cola from a pair of old fashioned bottles. They've just been informed the photographer was Meri.

"Wow Mal…I don't think I've EVER seen you looking so...well…SHORN," Pepper finally murmurs. She has no recallable memory of her father without his long hair.

Malcolm snorts, "Yes, well I was only 16 when this picture was taken, Virginia… still living in my father's house, and thus trapped under the thumb of his barber. I didn't grow my hair out for good until the year you were born."

"And even when he did so, he did it mostly trying to look like an actual grown up, 'cause there were middle schoolers with more facial hair and muscle tone then he had at that point…"

"Theresa…" Meri's voice from the corner chair is chiding.

"What? It's true….He was a total baby face, Mer and all of us know it." The woman is smiling at Malcolm as she says it, and the blushing man is grinning back. Which Tony'd beginning to realize is typical - there's a lot of teasing but very little intentional cruelty between the members of this unconventional family.

He's a little jealous of the tight knit bonds if he's honest.

"All I'm saying, Theresa," Meri continues on sagely, "Is that considering how much you've had to pay to get certain tattoos you got in the same time period removed, I wouldn't suggest you tease Mal too about how he used to look like a spring sheep. Or certain photographs that went missing may 'mysteriously' show back up in that photo album."

Theresa colors herself. Then she makes a slight bowing motion as if bowing out of a fencing match. "Touché. If you're going to play that dirty, Trouble, then I concede."

"Trouble?" Tony raises an eyebrow. "What does everyone here have pet nicknames for EVERYBODY?"

"After thirty plus years living out of each other's back pockets, pretty much." Eli's tenor is calm and just the slightest bit amused as he stokes up the ashes in the fireplace and throws on a couple more logs. "Though I'd hazard to guess that Merilee's earned her nickname more then all the rest of us put together."

"I don't MAKE trouble, I just see it. One doesn't absolve the tornado for crushing the house while still blaming the tree.." Meri is quick to retort, "If I've gotten into a few…scrapes over the years trying to react appropriately to various crises, I can hardly be blamed for that fact."

"What you mean is that in the heat of the moment you tend act with hyper-rationalism without explaining the REASONS for your actions," Pepper observes. "Which makes everyone else think you're crazy. Though you're usually right."

Not that that fact doesn't make the habit MORE annoying in some ways.

"You've been gone since you were a child," Eli says. "Yet, how is it that you seem to understand perfectly? Because that's exactly the kind of explanations we get once the smoke has cleared." He smiles as Meri who smiles back, albeit a little tiredly.

"I'm familiar with type," Pepper says calmly, though the hand resting along the back of the sofa points directly at the back of Tony's head.

Tony reaches behind him and gently captures the hand still pointing at the back of his head. "Yeah, yeah. Big bad Tony Stark. I can't imagine where the reputation came from."

Mal smirks. "Oooohhh...I think a challenge was just laid down."

"I've definitely got the dirt," Pepper says confidently. "Of course, so do most of the tabloids." That makes everyone chuckle. "To be honest I'd much rather hear about how Meri earned her reputation, though, then dish out more blackmail on Tony."

Theresa grins. "So do you want the story about the averted school fire or the one where the local pastor ended up hiding from a bull up in tree?"

"Neither of those tops the way Meri and I met for the first time," Mal says confidently. "Talk about the ravings of a mad woman."

"I wasn't mad." Meri is quick to point out.

"Yes well that's not how you came across to a perfect strange at the time."

"The situation was...precarious. And I saved your life - quite indisputedly."

"That doesn't change the fact you showed up with a rifle out of literally nowhere. And that the first thing you ever said to me directly was: "Wanna die horribly? No? Then kindly DON'T MOVE!"

"You were standing less than a foot away from a ground nest full of rattlers. Did you prefer I let them bite you?"

"Do one of you want to tell the story from the top, Meri? Because Dad's winning this one indisputably."

Meri snorts at that but motions to Malcolm to continue.

Pepper wiggles her fingers in Tony's grasp; he lets them go after pressing an absentminded kiss to the very tips and a mental admonishment to "be good." She suppresses a smile, resting her hand against the back of his neck instead where she allows her thumb to sweep back and forth across warm skin. There's still a slight buzz of anxiety in him that's kept them nearly joined at the hip since they came back to help prepare dinner. Pepper had meant to say something to the man preparing to tell his side of things, but he'd looked fairly ashamed of himself when he'd met them in the barn and she'd kept her mouth shut. She doubted there was anything she could say on the matter that Meri hadn't already.

"You have to understand that things were fairly different back in the '60s," Mal says as a starting point. "The family trade has always been in mechanics and when I wanted to test the car I'd fixed up with a summer road trip, my parents didn't protest too much. I suppose they thought it was better than my hanging around and getting into trouble while they did the summer social rounds with their business minded friends. Besides I'd done well at school that term, and Mom decided I'd earned the particular priviledge…

"We normally spent part of August in Seattle, visiting Mom's family and escaping the New York heat. They let me head off in July, driving cross country, and we agreed that they'd meet me in Washington in a few weeks.

"I followed Interstate 80 up to the Iowa/Nebraska border where I intended to follow the I-29 up to the I-90. However, I had a bit of car trouble and had to stop in Omaha to get a few parts replaced, and while I was there one of the mechanics recommended an alternate route through Nebraska, because he said I didn't want to get caught in the Badlands with car trouble.

"So instead, instead of being on a main thoroughfare with my car overheated, halfway through the state, I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, cornfields as far as the eye could see."

"They weren't corn they were wheat…"

"Are you telling this story or am I?"

Meri snorts and Tony gets the distinct feeling that if the two of them had been alone instead of in mixed company, Malcolm would have stuck out his tongue at her before continuing.

"Anyway, I'm stranded...and it feels like a hundred and twenty degrees outside. So I decided to walk a little ways back down the road to see if I could find a farm where I could get help. Instead I ended up stumbling upon a watering hole instead...the one on the east side of the property. I figured if nothing else I could stop there for a bit to cool off and get clean before going on."

Meri mutters something that sounds remarkably like "city kids" under her breath. Pepper's mouth twitches in sympathy. Granted, she doesn't like spiders, but she still has fond memories of the sounds Tony had made the first time he'd come face to face with what even she considered a particularly oversized wolf spider. She'd still made him kill it because she wasn't going to get any closer to the beast than she had to, but there had been a lot of standing around and arguing about it.

Tony looks at her sharply, as if he's caught the direction of her thoughts, but Pepper keeps her eyes locked on Mal.

'I've gotten a LOT better with _pests_.' Tony shoves the thought at her almost defensively and her amusement melts away into understanding. She knows he has and that he hadn't had much choice in the matter.

Neither of them notice the way both Mal and Meri study then carefully and when they look up Mal continuities his story as if he hadn't stopped.

"Trouble didn't find me until I was climbing out of the pond, soaking wet and scrawny in my Levi's in the way only a 16 year old boy can be. One minute I'm reaching for my shirt to towel off with, and the next this teenage girl appears out of nowhere with a shotgun and an attitude that implied she was ready to use it.

"Yes well, that particular watering hole was dangerous...which you would have known if you'd asked us about it before bathing via trespass on the property..." Meri shrugs and looks smug. "He's still just sore that I had to put a hole through his shirt in order to get that rattler. Personally, I think he'd be more grateful that I didn't let the snake put a pair of holes into him."

"I LIKED that shirt," Mal defends. "It was autographed and everything."

"Stop moping. I apologized afterwards for scaring the tar out of you. And I offered you access to our real shower so you could clean up and fed you THREE pieces of pie afterwards..."

"Pie..." Mal intones back in agreement, licking his lips in memory.

'Pie isn't a euphemism for something else around here, is it?' Tony asks silently.

'You've had Meri's pie crust,' Pepper replies. 'So what do you think they're talking about?'

Meri did make the best pie crust he'd ever tasted, and that was something considering the type of establishments Tony usually frequented. In this instance pie definitely meant the food.

"Pepper threatened to attack my security team the first time we met," Tony volunteers, as if he wants to somehow top the last story.

Five pairs of curious eyes turned on Pepper expectantly…

'Thanks a LOT.' "I...er...may have been a little pissed off at the time." More expectation. "No one would listen to me," she laments. "It's not like I didn't try to bring the problem to other people's attention first. But no, all anyone would say was that Tony Stark didn't make mistakes and go back to your desk."

"That _was_ probably the one time my math was wrong," Tony says consolingly.

"Math?" Mal looks like he's starting to understand. "This is that 'slight budgetary miscalculation' you caught before your sudden promotion, Ginny?"

"I was being nice," she grumbles. "Try closer to a few million dollars, all because no one bothered to double check his numbers. And then when no one would listen and I got myself fired for my efforts, I decided I had nothing to lose by taking it to Tony directly. It just took a little…insistence to get him to actually CHECK the math..."

"She's been checking my fiscal projections ever since," Tony says dryly. "It's probably a good thing she's never caught another one, too, considering what that first mistake brought about. We might have been married and divorced by now if she had."

"Doubtful." Pepper snorts. "Your math may mostly be solid, Tony, but from what I've been told one else has ever succeeded at getting you go your meetings on time without the use of a cattle prod."

"Typical." Meri interjects, "When it comes to choosing their handlers, male colts can be notoriously finicky."

There's a pause, then the room erupts into laughter when Pepper lets out a poorly surpressed whoop of laughter at the comment.

"Meri." Malcolm mutters, when the din dies down and he's able to wipe the tears from his eyes, speaking faux-sternly "Do we really have to have the 'people don't like being referred to horses' talk AGAIN?"

Tony, aware of his bond mate's barely suppressed hilarity finds himself grinning at her pure amusement, even if the joke is – unfortunately accurately - at his expense. "It's okay Mal…people have said far worse."

Besides, he has no issue at ALL with the idea of Pepper riding him.

Beside him it's Pepper's turn to choke…presumably as that thought echoes down the link. –Classy Stark.- "In truth I think my success in…motivating…Tony, is mainly based on my mastery of Starkonian."

"Starkonian?" Tony raises an eyebrow.

"Like Martian. You really do speak your own language sometimes, Tony."

He snorts, "Pott, Kettle, Pep. You're in denial if you think you're any different."

Meri chuckles, reaching out to pat Pepper's knee consolingly "He's probably right about that. Of course the same could probably be said for every single person ever born on this earth. It gets easier to cope with once you just accep…"

The rest of her words cut off abruptly.

"Meri?" Mal's head comes up.

"Mom…?"

"SHIT!" Terri swears, dashing forward as Merilee topples out of her chair, utterly limp.


End file.
